Sorry
Microsoft and
Apple, you may have had some fancy smartphone sales this year in your cute little American way, but globally there's no question who's the real leader in this segment: the Symbian OS shipped on 77.3 million units in 2007. That's a 50% growth over 2006 sales, with over 141 different phone models from eight licensees. If the new hotness from Nokia this year at MWC is any indication, those numbers aren't going to go away very soon, but Sony Ericsson's adoption of Windows Mobile for its flagship
XPERIA X1 certainly spells a modicum of trouble for Symbian land. Of course, there are many more low-end Symbian smartphones than there are cheap Windows Mobile phones, and Apple's iPhone is still a premium product , but the line is becoming increasingly blurred.
posted Feb 12th 2008 9:06AM
Symbian is really excellent. You need to pull your battery out constantly to unfreeze the phone.
which Symbian phones you're using?? AFAIK, the latest N95 US Edition, N95 8GB Black edition (and soon to be US edition), N76, N81 (and its 8GB), and all other newer Symbian have more RAM for the OS hence greatly improved the stability of the platform...
I personally owned iPhone and N81 and both works awesome =) and no both of them rarely froze on me
of course if you're using the old E62 or N75 crap which is selling in the US they will be unstable partly because it's the older generation and still having the memory problems
I did the same for my old HTC SDA but I prefer the customizing features of S60 3rd Ed better than WinMo.
Symbian's a gret little OS. The problems come because Nokia put slow-as-balls processors into the phones, making them painfully unresponsive, and totally cheap out on build quality so the wretched things fall apart as soon as you look at them.
I say this as a hardcore, high-end Nokia user over the last 10 years; I've watched both problems get steadily worse, until I finally lost patience this year. The really funny thing is how with each new generation of phones, word from Noka is that "We've learned our lesson, we finally put a quick CPU in it!" - and it's never true.
That's just not true with current N and E series
phones.
All the current phones are as fast s40 phones and looking at what kind of games N95, N81, N82 and coming up N series phone are running they are packing some nice iron.
Build quality is issue with some of the phones, but example E65, N82, E61, E51 got great build quality thought i agree that they should do some work with that mostly with N series hopefully these new phones will have great build quality. I would really like to see N series phone with 6500s/c body.
"That's just not true with current N and E series."
Where have I heard that before? Oh, only... EVERY time Nokia bring out a new generation of phones. This time they're not crap, honest! They're as good as we told you the last lot were, but this time, we really mean it!
I've used them. They still suck. The UI can only be classed as 'responsive' if you're working on a geological timescale. The last phone I had from Nokia that was actually snappy was a 3310. They just get slower with every release, not faster.
To be honest, I owned a N95, an iPhone, a Blackberry 8800 and an AT&T Tilt, and I don't find Symbian or the iPhone OS exactly "smartphone"-like. Windows Mobile and maybe the Blackberry OS are the only ones that really got the whole job done. And don't even get me started on Palm OS.
Maybe I'm an insane Windows Mobile fan.
But also, maybe I need something more than a camera on my phone.
ok, Symbian, the iphone, winmo, and Bberry all have much more to offer than JUST a camera. you are really kidding yourself if you believe this. However, i do agree, that if you are looking for business-centric software/device, then BBerry(1st) and winmo(2nd) are your best choices.
Yeah, it's a love/hate relationship with WM. You can get just about anything done--probably more so than on any other platform--but the way there isn't always pretty or smooth, and may involve frozen apps and pulled batteries, out of memory errors, and so on. If Microsoft worked on "just" two things--better memory management and a more phone-oriented GUI with less ugly--they would make peace with a whole lot more people. While my Dash does pretty much anything I need it to do, having it give me "out of memory" errors while I frantically try to fire up Live Search to look up a number, or having the phone app freeze while in call and refusing to hang up the call, are things I could very nicely do without.
I love getting out of memory errors on my cell phone. That's what I call progress!
I have used Palm OS, S60 and WinMob phones.
Palm OS used to be a great PDA OS, but as of now too archaic. I find S60 a great smartphone platform, offering a pretty damn good phone experience as well as a host of good third party software and tight user integration.
I have been using WinMob touchscreen for years but still find the phone part as backwards as Palm OS. But as a PDA and open platform, it is probably the best among the three platforms I listed.
One thing Palm did right was PIM synchronization. My Nokia E61 technically does have a calendar, contacts and tasks but it only syncs with Exchange so it is useless to the average user.
My next phone will have to sync with Thunderbird contacts/Lightning.
@Barky,
Huh!
Nokia phone suite makes it possible for the average user to sync their S60 phone w/ outlook on their personal computer. Has for a long time. Doesn't sync categories but is more stable and more likely to actually connect and sync than M$ ActiveSync. In my humble, P910, E62, Tilt experience.
@Richard
I don't want to run Outlook on my computer. It is expensive and clunky compared to the alternatives (Thunderbird, Lightning).
With Palm, I can sync to their lightweight PIM software that comes free with the phone.
I have never used Windows Mobile.
Using WM5 a year or so ago made me realise Winmob was not for me..., OK, so maybe I'm not a fan of stylus controlled UI's but I like the S60 interface far better.
Crap...
Paul Miller? Are you 6 years old?
Windows mobile a threat? hahah
What kind of reporting is this? Engadget for goodness sake weed out these people.
Windows Mobile is history. Mac OS X on the iPhone is the threat sunshine.
History will prove you and all the windoze fanbois to be foolish shortsighted Billyslaves.
Actually, I think he's hit the nail on the head. I'm an iPhone user and love it, but there are times I wish for my old XDA Mini S. Windows Mobile will come back with a vengeance in the Sony Ericsson incantation and MS buying Danger spells danger for Symbian ;)
How many of these use S60 or are all Symbian OSes using S60 at this point. I ask because of WebKit, undoubtedly the fastest browser and most compliant to web standards. The more common WebKit becomes the more likely we see webmasters coding to appeal to standards and not IE.
Symbian has S60 and pretty much every S60 phone sold is Nokia's and then comes Samsung(example G810).
-Nokia uses Symbian only for N and E series(exept of couple of exception).
-S40 is the most common OS and it's not Symbians! it's Nokia's own build and they pretty much make the 420 million phones Nokia sold last year.
Sadly Nokia phones aren't going to bring us a web standards revolution. Despite the huge gap in sales, studies show the iPhone has a greater presence in web traffic than the S60 browser - and even that's about 0.2% of all traffic. Safari on the desktop is about 5-6%.
If I calculate correctly this means an avarage of only half a million smartphones per model. In that case Apple didn't do a bad job: new to the market, 1/2 year availability, 1 model, 3.5 million.
Also, people tend to forget: iPhone=OS X=UNIX=past=present=future=developers=...
I was waiting for this...
Yes, an AVERAGE of 500,00 units per model but in all probability a much larger number for more successful models like the N95 and it's varients.
And, no, Apple have not sold 3.5 million units of a single model of iPhone - there are 4, 8 and 16GB models, so they AVERAGE out at 1-and-a-bit million each.
Iain:
4gb was discontinued quite a short while after the launch (can't remember) and the 16gb was released last week.
Anyway, basically you're saying they have sold 1 million 16gb iPhones in a week (Whoa!)
I'm guessing it's about 500,000-1 million of the 4 and 16gb combined and the rest 8gb
Here the Apple fanboys go again like they did on the WinMo thread...
The OS is what counts, not the device. The vast majority of people buy based on OS first, and device type second. People usually don't say, "Do I want to get a Tilt, N95, Pearl, 755p, or an iPhone?" No, they'll usually compare between devices that run the same OS once they've decided which OS they want. If the iPhone ran WM/RimOS, I bet they'd have sold quite a few more (because it would work with corporate e-mail). The fact it runs OSX probably cost it more sales than anything. Even if there were 50 iPhone models, they still would have sold about the same number of units (barring any substantialy low prices).
As L M Lloyd said in the WinMo thread:
"I'm sorry if it doesn't favor your beloved company, but this is how mobile market share is always talked about. No one talks about the success of the Nokia n95 vs. the Blackberry 8800 vs. the Treo 700. No one, not even your hero Steve Jobs. It is discussed as Symbian vs. RIM vs. Windows Mobile vs. Palm. You can make all the "but it is just one model vs. hundreds of models" argument all you want, but that doesn't get the iPhone any bigger market share. The fact of the matter is that no matter how much you love it, the iPhone is a flop. No matter how much the press gushes about it, the sales figures are weak, and in light of the unprecedented media blitz it had, actually kind of pathetic. Those Apple figures saying it is "#2 in America" are based on some completely cooked definitions of what constitutes a smartphone, and even then are somewhat dubious. Any independent analysis of the smartphone market ranks Symbian as #1, Windows Mobile as #2, RIM as #3, Palm as #4, and the iPhone down there in the "others" category with the Sidekick. Maybe that will change in the future, but if you want to declare victory before your team has even met their own lackluster sales targets, you have to expect to get knocked down a peg when the actual big guys in the game release their figures."
@Kizorblade
You don't understand the concept of an average, do you?
I completely agree with Kamokazi. At least, that's how I look at it.
Besides, finding an average isn't very fair... I mean, we have phones like the N95 and the E65 which clearly surpass the iPhone, and those Samsung S60 phones I don't see anyone talking about...
xbit:
What I'm trying to say is that using an average for the iPhone or any phone for that matter is silly, it's like taking your greatest selling phone and some custom gem expensive phone and saying that they sold an average of oh say 16 million.
"If the iPhone ran WM/RimOS, I bet they'd have sold quite a few more (because it would work with corporate e-mail). The fact it runs OSX probably cost it more sales than anything."
This has to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard about the iPhone. THE NUMBER ONE REASON PEOPLE BUY THE IPHONE IS THE INTERFACE. It's well known that it has less overall features than some of the competition, so why in the hell would I buy one if it came with WinMo? Doh!
Read this: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3027&p=28
Kamokazi - the vast majority of people buy based on hardware or more precisely how 'cool' the phone looks, dont kid yourself. I'm talking about the common consumer that makes up the majority of the 77.3M we are discussing, not the hand full of tech geeks here.
To prove my point think back and tell me have you ever seen a cell phone advertisement that shows off the OS??? Even the new Sony XPERIA X1 is being sold by showing tons of pics off the sexy hardware with only one lame shot of some multi-panel screenshot thats prob just a fancy task manager.
I think most people pick a carrier first then pick a cool looking phone then say WTF is up with this software. Then they wait another year or two until their contract is up and go through the process again. Most people dont even know what a mobile OS is.
finally lay off the iPhone - what has it done to you? Did it run over your dog, did it eat your cereal this morning? the iPhone has only been out for 6 moths in the US. Give it a year from when the iPhone SDK is released and then compare how it stacks up to the competition.
I consider myself lucky to even have the choice of RIM, iPhone, WiMo, Sybian and Palm. Competition is a good thing and it moves all these companies forward - just pick a phone you enjoy using and lay off what others enjoy.
Have you forgotten that the Nokia N95 alone sold 7million in about 10 months
@Kizorblade: I know full well that the 4GB iPhone didn't last long and that the 16GB model has only just been released but since we're talking about AVERAGES here, that doesn't matter.
Adam's point about an average of 500,000 units shipped per model of Symbian phone also doesn't take into account the fact that some of those models will have been discontinued early in 2007 and some will only have been released within the last month or so.
So, to respond, no I'm not saying there have been over a million 16GB iPhone sold in a week, I'm just not that stupid.
Only a complete moron would derive that from my previous statement.
@Scott-
1) That didn't come out right (I somewhat suck at conveying my thoughts properly into writing so that others can understand)...What I really meant was a WM or RimOS backend (and therefore app compatibility amont other things) with generally the same type of interface.
2) I would be willing to bet the #1 reason is the look and name...which partially includes the interface. Interface is important, but I doubt it's the #1 reason by itself. (While this probably excludes most Engadget readers I would think, many Apple fans are more concerned about form as opposed to function).
@Andrew-
Symbian is a bit different here in that it is often found on many non-smartphone-ish devices. So many Symbian users see it as a 'regular' phone.
I am maily thinking about RimOS, WM, and Palm, and the high-end Symbian devices. Those consumers *generally* know about the OS, and probably the largest segment of them are corporate/business customers, who definately know what the different OSes are and buy based on that. (or they should, but I can't be held responsible for inept IT departments...)
As for the advertising, yes, I do see the OSs being touted as a feature. But that's because I see plenty of advertising targeted at IT & business professionals (and have you been in airports lately, especially internationally-tons of HTC Touch ads touting the WinMo). The consumer-targeted advertisements do not mention it nearly as often (but they still do some).
And finally, I have no problem with the iPhone or Apple. (Just like you, I'm glad it came out because it caused other manufacturers/carriers to get their butts in gear and produce decent competition.) It's just that I have a low tolerance for ignorant morons, and the fanboys here that try to spin the numbers so they can claim Apple > all drive me nuts.
@ Andrew
Do yo realize how long a year is in the mobile phone world? You say to give the iPhone a year after the SDK is released before you make any judgments about it, and that leads me to think you don't have any idea how long that really is. By then RIM will have a new version of their OS, Windows Mobile 7 will probably be out, Android will be out, and who knows what Nokia will have come out with by that time. We heard that we should wait for the iPhone to come out, and it would change everything, because it was going to be the most revolutionary phone ever made. It came out, and it wasn't. It was lacking all sorts of basic features every other smartphone has. Then we heard that any time now there would be 3rd-party apps that would fix that. For the most part they haven't materialized except as hacks that require you to unlock the phone, and then unlock it again every time there is a software update. Now we hear that what we need to wait for is the SDK. I am willing to bet, based on Apple's history, that the SDK isn't going to be at all the panacea people are hoping for. I'm sure once the SDK is out, and disappointing, we will hear that we need to wait for the 3G iPhone 2, and then it will be amazing.
Problem is, there are already all sorts of amazing phones out there with 3rd-party apps right now, and they are selling by the tens of millions. Those of us not inclined to stop and wait for Apple to get its shit together don't have to wait for anything. We can go out today and get phones with GPS chips, and 3G, and the ability to run thousands of applications, and the ability to work on any network of our choosing, at whatever price point we feel like paying, for whatever use we want to put them to. It requires a huge leap of faith to sit around waiting to see how the iPhone evolves, just for the sake of having a phone with an Apple logo on it. Sure, if Apple sticks with it for a few more years, they might actually come up with a device that is better than a BlackBerry, or Nokia, or Windows Mobile is right now, but why wait? Those of us who aren't personally invested in a brand can get what we want today, not on Apple's schedule. The phone manufacturers aren't just sitting around waiting for Apple to catch up and maybe surpass them. There are new phones coming out all the time. Why sit around hoping one particular phone will someday have features you could get just by switching phones?
"Of course, there are many more low-end Symbian smartphones than there are cheap Windows Mobile phones"
That's very debatable. The low-end Symbian phones are still more expensive than WM phones like the HTC Oxygen and HP iPAQ 514.
Wait... I've had free low-end Symbian phones before. Years ago I was on a Nokia 3650 that was free after the rebate and it was running Symbian (what OS exactly I can't remember, and I really don't feel like Googling it right now). I know my wife has had other Symbian-based phones for cheap or free, too.
I do not think I've ever seen a WM phone free after rebate.
Are you sure the Audiovox SMT5600 wasn't free? It only retailed for £150 SIM free in the UK.
Check out websites like expansys.com/co.uk for a comparison on prices.
This is similar to a trick question I was once asked...
Q: What's the largest chain of retail bakeries in North America?
A: Pizza Hut
Q: Whats the fastest growing food-chain in the world?
A: Ikea
Oh GOD Why did I switch to Sprint? I get no choice with CDMA.
Honestly, I've used iPhone, BBerry, WinMo, and out of all of them... I think WinMo and Palm are my faves. Palm isn't pretty, but it's flexible, and Holy Schit stable. BBerry i found the most difficult to use, and WinMo had the best built in Software. The iPhone was pretty, and had a pretty UI, but.. otherwise it was a pretty dumb Smartphone... And that No physical keyboard got to me.
I'd like to try a good Symbian Smartphone, but with no QWERTY models.. I just can't see it being as useful.
And I had..
iPhone 4GB (I hate AT&T, and where is my MMS/IM?)
T-Mobile Wing (What is stability?)
T-Mobile Blackberry Pearl (How do I set up email?)
Palm Centro (It ain't pretty, but I can stream internet radio)
Oh and the T-Mobile Shadow.... Would have loved a full QWERTY Keyboard... and the phone got run over by a car...
The problem isn't a like of Symbian QWERTY models - the Nokia E90 and Sony Ericsson P1i spring to mind, along with that new LG model. The problem is that none of the decent models are available from a carrier in the US.
I'm sure there's more than a few people who'd love a subsidized N95.
You truly are an idiot if you cannot set up email on a blackberry
How is it that so many people on this site seem to have like 8 different phones a year? And nice new cutting edge phones. Do you feed them to the homeless and buy a new one each month?
IM? I use Apollo and use JiveTalk for Gtalk. MMS? I don't get MMS... why not just email it, what's the rush?
Stop spamming you romanian prick. You're spamming engadget and gizmodo like crazy.
Nobody cares about your pseudo-scam site. Go away. You've been reported
Hopefully Apple will learn from symbian and allow it's phones to set custom ringtones, make a brilliant symbian like LOG program, let people send music via BT and finally just start selling factory jailbroken iphones. On the other hand, hopefully Nokia will learn from apple and change their ugly UI.
Posting a link to YOUR site that has nothing to do with the article is SPAM.
Posting a 6 word meaningless commentary attached to that said link does not magically turn it into something other than SPAM.
If you had posted a link to an article (for example) about a study of how failure prone Symbian phones are then that would have been a RELEVANT link and NOT spam.
Be warned: It seems your country has an antispam law.
Law number 365/2002 with addendum H.G. 1308/2002 published M.O. 877/5 states that you are passible for a fine up to 15000€ for spamming.
If you continue I am going to notify your authorities about your activities
Man, I feel like such a sheep. If I'd known so many people had Symbian phones I'd have bought an iPhone so I could really stand out from the crowd.
I hate how they make market shares by using "Symbian" as a category. "Symbian" includes OS's like S60, UIQ, and some customized versions... but people end up thinking Symbian=S60. I think people should start breaking down "Symbian" into S60, UIQ, and "Other Symbian variants" now... They're quite different.
It's like using "Linux" to describe PC OS market share, only that Symbian is the majority of the marketshare, not minority like Linux.
Sorry for the off-topicness, but I feel the urge to express this point.
As for the topic, though, I absolutely love S60, despite its lack of touch. I am not surprised at all that S60 performs so well in the market. I have used UIQ, WinMo, and Mac OS X (iPhone) phones and S60 is the clear winner.
and so the myth that OS market share matters more than the merits on which they should be competing is extended to the mobile market.
bleh.
But it does matter. The biggest difference between any smartphone and a regular phone is its ability to run software. The software developer base is determined by the support they get from the OS maker, and the install base of the OS. Everything else is nice to have, but not as important. Sure, a nice interface, or good build quality are great, but they don't matter all that much if you can't do anything with the phone.
i disagree.
the Mac has a relative low market share, but i've never run into ANYTHING meaningful that i "can't do" because of a lack of software.
I'd also say that a "nice interface" isn't at all a "nice extra" but rather, a fundamental necessity. Ditto to good build quality. from there, good software, which doesn't necessarily even need to be 3rd party. The extra apps are the items that are "nice to have."
That is, unless you need the device to perform 1 specific function only available from a 3rd party, but I'm talking about my perception of the general public. (I don't know a single person who actually uses any 3rd party software on a regular basis on their smartphone.)
I understand that Market share might potentially mean more software availability, but even if that IS the case, marketshare is STILL a lousy replacement metric for merit.
I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about phones, not computers, so I don't see what your Mac has to do with anything.
You might not know anyone who uses any software on their phone, but if so you have a very strange group of friends. The fact is that millions of people use software on their phones. Just about everyone who buys a smartphone needs the "device to perform 1 specific function only available from a 3rd party." That is why people typically buy a smartphone. It doesn't matter if it is connecting to a certain type of database, or connecting to a certain type of email server, or doing remote administration, or playing a certain type of game, or using certain mapping software, or watching a certain type of video, or connecting to a particular media server, or using certain types of ringtones, just about everyone with a smartphone bought it because of some killer app that they needed it to do. As a rule, people buy the phone based on whether or not it will do what they want, not because of the brand or how it looks.
I'm sorry if I am oversimplifying your position, but it really sounds a lot to me like you are saying you don't really care what the phone does, or how well it serves its purpose as a smartphone, as long as it looks cool, and has a neat interface. To me that screams that what you are really looking for is a fashion phone, not a smartphone. To each his own, but most people have higher requirements than the phone just being a neat fashion object.
I stopped reading your reply after the first sentence.
If you can't see the parallel, then you're useless.
You are obviously a child, because there really is very little similarity between the current computer market, where you have 3 main OSs, and plenty of cross-platform development tools, and the phone market, where you have at least 7 OSs, and almost no tools for porting applications from one to the other.
But of course, you pick you phone based on brand and how it looks, so why would I expect you to know anything about software development?
Well looks like Gizmodo thinks your comments are spam, so do I incidentally.
And as to the article being in Romanian, one more reason not to post it (You didn't even tell people it was in Romanian).
S60 and iPhone have been my favourites.I've been using S60 right from the 7650.I absolutely loved the phone,I then switched to the N-gage(I know,but it was a b'day gift)which had a pretty decent collection of games and software(Fexplorer FTW!!).I currently have the N95 now and i'm loving fring.
My WinMo experience has not been that great.Tried HTC Touch,ended up deleting(accidentally)all my contacts accumulated over the years :(
Gotta hand it to the iphone for usability,absolutely love it.I don't prefer those which have a full QWERTY keyboard so RIM and palm are out of the question.
Any chance EngadgetMobile could perform a great service for the phone-challenged here (me only probably!).
Keep a list of current and upcoming phones that are Europe only or can be used on US networks? I can not half keep track of what I can only drool over or can actually use!
77.3m Symbian smartphones would be all fine and dandy, except I don't consider most symbian-based phones smartphones.
Because they dont have qwerty?
That's difference with NA and Asian/ European market.
Asia/Europe>S60>smartphone
qwerty phone is business/smartphone while s60 is many times the ultimate multimedia phone OS
NA>WM>qwerty>smartphone
mostly used for business much less about the multimedia features compared s60. Work phone.
Why are iphones being compared to the symbian OPERATING SYSTEM, which is on countless different types of phones!? Comparing the sale of hardware to software isn't the most accurate comparision that one can make. Especially when you're comparing Symbian, who has been in the markert for years, to Apple, who has just started last year. Can you honestly hope to prove a point by comparing numbers that are blatantly OBVIOUS? It's most likely not the quality of the operating system itself that has resulted in this many sales, it's more like symbian has a greater presence than iphones, whose hardware and OS are unique only to that specific product, as well as the limited amount of places that one can acquire an iphone.
I'm not an iphone fanboy, i have a nokia phone. but this article is pretty much crap. maybe the intent was to get the numbers out, but it's just ridiculous to be comparing the sale of physical iphones with symbian software. There are too many differences for it to be anything other than mere number comparisions.
Paul you might as well hand out torches and pitchforks with articles like this!
I had a good laugh reading the comments, you've earned your keep for today.
Thanks to the mobile companies, we wouldn't have that many handsets to choose from, let alone the types of operating systems running on them.
It's been a long trip from the brick phones, so long that we now call firmware updates that make your phone stop working, "bricking".
In the end the only numbers that matter are the ones that only the carriers have.
Hopefully you could scrounge up those ones for us in the future. Those would be awesome to see.
woo hoo - one of those phones is mine.. :)