KevMc's Profile

A comment on Robotech's comments on Symbian- I am afraid I do not agree that 'When a company’s management and operations are controlled by multitude of big multinationals such as Nokia, Ericsson, Sony-Ericsson, Panasonic,Siemens/BenQ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian) one would cautiously say that they are not free to be creative but driven mostly by the needs of their owners.' Knowing Symbian very well ;) it has never been my impresssion or observation that this is the case. Certainly Nokia has large influence, but who not not listen to the number #1 handset manufacturer :) I am sure Nokia would wish it was different too. Symbian are definately very customer driven, like all good businesses And a correction on the iPod also from Robotech- the iPod nano does indeed have two ARM7 cores (http://www.arm.com/markets/mobile_solutions/armpp/10341.html), but the 2nd gen Nano does not use completely the same arcitecture, the iPhone is very different and has several ARM cores. Also got my grubby hands on the iPhone today- very very cool, the interface is really as good as the adverts- and the texting (which is the acid test for Europe as we send loads) even after several minutes had started to adapt to my two-thumbed typing- Impressive indeed.

Have to agree with my other European colleagues, Symbian is hugely popular in all of the world, and one correction on Motorola- they are now committing to more handsets for the US market. Microsoft hardly features in the UK, and Linux not at all I think though at the end of the day the article missed the point. The mobile space is not the same as the PC world, so there will be no OS war, we will have several OS in the market. My personal opinion as someone working in the high-tech mobile world is: - Microsoft will not win this space, as it does not really get the market, especially the relationships. Mobile phone manufactures are distrustful of Microsoft, and do not like the control Microsoft has over the platform. Network operators similarly (the US aside) have Microsoft but it features as one of two devices. -Symbian is seen as a good platform as there are many developers out there (same as Microsoft), and offers a certain amount of standardisation with UIQ and S60, which reduces cost for operators, and is not owned by one company. Symbian has built strong relationships with its partners, where the relationship is a partnership. - I am huge Apple fan, so I think they will do relatively well, maybe surprising us all with their tightly coupled software, hardware and service. I am really looking forward to Apple driving other companies to innovate more and I am sure there are several ways to implement interfaces like Apple's and not infringe patents. Would I buy an iPhone? Jury is out right now, having not played with one yet. 3G is probably a show stopper for me as personally I travel a lot for work, and 3G is needed for Japan and Korea. Most friends I talk to do not know what 3G is, let alone care. - Ultimately for me, and the main point is the smart-phone market definition is really a grey area, when does a feature phone become a smart-phone? Consumers certainly do not care and why should they? My Nokia 6280 and N95 from a user perspective are almost identical, both support PIMs and decent data connections. With Nokia pushing WiFi and GPS in feature phones too. Nokia's S40 NOS is the most widely used OS in mobile phones world-wide, and its capability continues to improve. I see Symbian pushing down and feature phone OS pushing up. Hence why I say I do not think there will be an OS war.