Tag: Symbian Page 4 of 6

So, Google: App Store or Web? Or Both?

On 21/07/2009

In 1

Last week, there was the Mobilebeat conference on, and – amongst many other things – a lot of guys felt they had to air their opinions on the future of mobile apps or, errh, no apps. They spoke so elaborately about it that even the revered FT (albeit in its blog section) and the BBC felt compelled to run stories. Amongst others, the CEO of “indie” app store Get Jar and Google’s wonderful Vic Gundotra, VP Engineering and also equipped with this most valleyed of all Silicon Valley job titles, i.e. “Evangelist” (I would really like one like this, too!), in his case for developers spoke about where they saw information and entertainment on mobile phones going in the future and how the ecosystem would look like.

Now, let’s get serious.

What was Said?

First, GetJar‘s CEO sees the market for mobile applications becoming – get this – as big as the Internet (woah!). He then said also that it would peak at about 10m apps (in total?) by 2020. Hmm. GetJar then went on to warn that the number of developers would drop “drastically” and that only about 10% would be able to survive. The others would take their skills elsewhere. So where then? To the web? (This is of course interesting also because GetJar will deliver Sony Ericsson’s App Store…).

It is here where Google comes in. Gundotra said that, according to Google (and who would question them), the web had won. Even (!) Google was struggling with the device fragmentation in mobile and many, many applications could be delivered through “incredibly powerful” browsers as well. He even borrowed Steve Jobs for his argument, pointing out that the Apple CEO had announced that the iPhone was “Built for the Web” upon its launch.

There were others who contributed: Nokia’s Head of Services reminded everyone that Nokia was there to help with its Qt (Cutie, geddit?) cross-platform application network . The Symbian Foundation’s Executive Director, Lee Williams queried the need for more app stores and called, instead, for more than “just a bucket of apps”, which should look like an aisle with the very stuff that specific consumer is interested in and which (s)he could wander down at leisure.

They all however concluded that it [scil. the mobile web] was not there yet. Hm again… Let’s try to disentangle this all:

The Needle in the Haystack

Upon the launch of the app store and the wondrous stories of the iShoot developer Ethan Nicholas who coded in his bedroom after work only to resign from his day job weeks later because he made more money than he had ever thought. A lot of developers read that and, since it is the wet dream of every games developer (earn cash with an honest game without the “suits” fiddling with your game in between; anyone remember Copeland’s skateboarding turtle?), embarked on the journey themselves. And then they found, oops, it does not work that way? Why not? Well, because there are more than 400 applications going live every day. And with the sheer number of them, it could well be that the best app ever written is already out there but buried deep a couple of categories down in the app store.

This is no big surprise. It is how it works in any sector: one smart kid is not enough, you also need the environment and a lot of other building blocks to have a winner (as reigning F1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton is painfully realizing this year).

In the app store’s (and a gazillion other) case, this means that you have to make sure that you gain some attention. From Apple (or any other app store operator), from the press, from the users out there. And this is not news. There have been very well written pieces about this galore (see here for just one of them).

So will this mean the fall of a lot of the developers that went about their business thinking the app store magic would do away with centuries of business logic (there is a reason why companies have sales & marketing departments, you know…)? Yes, very probably. But does that mean the app model is flawed? No.

The Hit Dilemma

One of the Mobilebeat participants, namely Playfish, creators of some of the most successful Facebook games who released on the iPhone, too, complained about the hit-driven nature of games on the App Store. Whilst I am painfully aware of this dilemma, one has – again – to point out that this is pretty much how most of the economy works, too, unless, that is, one builds a superior and dominant brand (Tetris would be the example for the games world).

Other industries know this, too. Everyone knows IBM is a leading computer maker. Hardly anyone remembers that the Dutch electronics giant Philips used to be one of the biggest players in that market (not even Wikipedia mentions this); their CeBIT booth was bigger than IBM’s throughout the 70’s and early 80’s (my dad worked for Philips then; I need to dig out some pictures). What happened? Hey, they missed some crucial disruptive innovations and they were history…

What I want to say is that no one is immune to the demand for constant innovation and improvement (otherwise some Firefox will sneak around the corner and steal market share). The reason why this hit dilemma is more painful in mobile games than elsewhere is the relatively small size of the market to date: it is more difficult to build reserves than in other, more established sectors.

How Many App Stores? Mee too, me three, me four, …

With Apple’s roaring success with the app store, the whole industry stampeded to put out their own, and they have been moderately successful or failed. But it is early days! Why did they fail? Because they equally had hoped that one thing and one thing only (just name your bucket of apps an “app store”) would heal the painful failure of the sector in converting otherwise gladly paying users to also using, consuming, contributing to entertainment and information on their mobiles. Now, this overlooked that Apple’s model did not only consist of a storefront. It also consisted of a fairly simple developer programme (with a click-through agreement), a fair(er) revenue share to the developers and unprecedented ease of use in getting to the app of one’s choice. Try and apply this to, say, the launch of Nokia’s Ovi Store…

So do users need more than one store? No, not in general. If you can get all you ever need, want or desire from one destination, you don’t need another one. This however becomes a little precarious with a view to monopolizing channels. You would never know if there are not some that are a little more equal than you… So, having Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc. next to Internet Explorer did the world a ton of good. And having Nokia, Sony Ericsson, the carriers working on alternatives to Apple’s app store is arguably of equal value. Will the user care? It depends on the execution: Google’s superior search algorithms made the old-style catalogue model previously found in search engines superfluous; why do I need to sort something if I have a little fairy that races to get me what I want in no time? So: if I have a bucket that comes with a little fairy, I don’t need long, long supermarket aisles. I’d rather get it home-delivered by the search fairies.

It’s the Usability, stupid!

Now to the key question: separate apps or web? Now in Google’s case, their pleading is somewhat obvious: well, they would, wouldn’t they?

Google, on the other hand, has apps out on most platforms for most of their web services: Be it Gmail (great Blackberry app!), Maps, or – all in one – their iPhone Google app, it comes as an app. And why?

Because it would otherwise be unusable! OK, let me rephrase that: the delivery of browser-based applications through mobile phones suffers some very severe setbacks today, amongst which usability on a small screen, constant connectivity and bandwidth. Whilst the latter two are arguably solvable some time soon, the former is a little trickier: when delivering to a mobile device, you not only have to download all underlying data (graphical assets, etc) but also an interface that works on that device. And because of the small form factor of mobile phones (even in the case of large-screen touchscreen phones like the iPhone), this is likely that your user experience will be significantly worse than on a large screen equipped with mouse, touchpad, etc. Apps can bridge this usability gap, and I would argue that this is precisely why Google is producing them. The underlying content can often (not always) well be delivered from the cloud but the UI of small devices is crucial to their sensibility.

With both (mobile) browser technology and handsets improving, the space available for services that can sensibly (and with superior costs) be delivered from the cloud (i.e. through the web) will increase, and steeply. However, there will always be applications that will either be impossible to deliver via the web (name a high-end 3D racing game on the web) or where a specific mobile UI would greatly improve the usability of any service.

It is another question if these will be delivered via flexible widgets or larger, more comprehensive apps (functionally, a lot of apps effectively are covert widgets); this will simply be (and remain) a question on the complexity of any given task and the ease and superior (or not) delivery an app would provide over a browser-based service. There will be an equilibrium between the two but I posit that there will remain large areas where browser-based delivery will not be able to compete with specific applications (that will draw on data from the cloud as well). Incidentally, 58% of Wired readers agree with me (and another 17% don’t care; check the bottom of the article) 😉

This can be seen on the (“normal”) web, too: Google Docs (Google’s online suite of office applications) is, despite a lot of effort and being free to use, an utter underdog to MS Office or Open Office (the only numbers I could find give Google Docs a market share of between 1% and 5%). It is, I think, because downloadable office “apps” are so much more usable (and react instantaneously irrespective of my ISP’s moods) than online services. The complexity of the computing (and – more importantly – the bandwidth necessary to deliver it) is just too overwhelming (see here for a previous post on this).

More evolved mobile apps often are (and/or will be) a hybrid: they offer a front-end that optimizes the data drawn from an online environment for use on a specific mobile device. It will not be an “either/or” but an “and”. Anything else would anyway be so last century!

In Conclusio:

Whenever possible, services will move online because it is cheaper to produce. Whenever necessary, they will be delivered through dedicated apps because it is required to use them!

Mobile Innovation; in Response to Scoble

By Volker

On 14/07/2009

In 1, OEM

Egoblogger extraordinaire Robert Scoble has never been known to be shy, and so he declared with his usual great fanfare that Europe did not matter any more in terms of mobile innovation. Why did he say that, you ask? Well, Nokia apparently took him to visit their research lab in Cambridge (no, not in Espoo) as part of a (Nokia-)sponsored geek tour. And Scoble was not impressed. Because (1) everyone appears to have been texting when he was on the tube (how quaint), (2) the N97 isn’t cooler than the iPhone and (3) Symbian is much clunkier than the iPhone’s OS or Palm’s WebOS, Scoble deduces that Europe has had it.

He reduces this loss of leadership in mobile innovation to handsets or, more specifically, to the coolness factor of handsets (“London’s cool kids are [not] hot and bothered” about the N97). And, with that somewhat tight limitation, he might actually be right. Nokia has been losing ground on the coolness and usability front for quite a while. However, when it comes to technical ability, their devices are still quite hot. Scoble basically uses the iPhone plus the first Android-based (Taiwanese [sic!]) phones to declare that the king is dead.

Hardware is a Commodity

Now, let’s try to differentiate a little. Would you say the US have the lead in computer manufacturing? Well, probably not. IBM’s ThinkPads are Chinese, then there is Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, and there is HP and Dell. There is of course also Apple (“designed in California”). Does it matter at all where the hardware is from? No, not at all, and no one really cares anymore. And why not? Because hardware is basically a commodity, that is in a world where one does not actually see that much of the hardware because the interfaces are software-driven. And these are from Microsoft, etc.

In mobile, this has not been true in the past because their were such vast differences in the available hardware that the usability was severely impaired should you have been using, say, a low-end Motorola device as opposed to a high-end Nokia. This is where the myth of European mobile superiority comes from. And, with Apple, RIM and maybe Palm again, this is firmly in North American hands. There are of course Samsung and LG, the Korean powerhouses who drive their market share up and up. Android devices G1, G2 and Magic are from Taiwanese HTC. However, given how far mobile software and indeed services have come: does it really matter either way today? I say it does not.

Here’s the Innovation: Services

If one wants to see where mobile innovation is happening, one would need to go to South Korea, Japan, Finland (not the Nokia research labs but, say, the public transport system where you can pay via SMS for the past couple of years already), Austria (mass deployment of mobile RFID-payments), South Africa (mobile wallets and very evolved mobile marketing services), Malaysia, the Philippines and even Kenya (mobile money transfers). Certainly not the US though, I’m afraid. They are still the country where “can you hear me now?” campaigns rule.

The iPhone has changed a lot of things of course. However, American Idol arguably did a lot more. It brought, shock, horror, texting to the Americans. SMS being, of course, a service. And why, Mr Scoble, should that be bad? Carriers (other than in the US) have made 25% of their revenues and 50% of their profits over the last 10 years with this unassuming little thing. That’s not too shabby, is it? The iPhone (and Palm’s WebOS) have introduced a new level of ease of use, and one that was long overdue. One that woke Nokia, which had comfortably dominated the space with less and less innovation on the software side, up (and Nokia might be a little slow to open their eyes properly). And one that will improve service levels all over the world.

Where the Big Market is

However, let us also not forget that the best-selling phone of all times is the Nokia 1100. No, it doesn’t do Java. It has a battery life of close to 20 years though and comes with a flashlight installed. Both very handy things to have in rural parts of developing or emerging countries. Nokia is having a fairly comfortable market share in these countries. I am not sure if that is a good thing to rest on though: as these markets, they demand more sophisticated devices. And because the computer penetration is much lower than in Europe, Japan, South Korea and North America, the significance of evolved mobile devices will be even more important. Nokia thought this would carry it through. However, we are seeing now that that might not be so: its smartphone market shares are rapidly decreasing.

Europe is not Europe

One last word on Europe: distinct to what Mr Scoble appears to have in mind, Europe is not a country, and this is not meant to be sarcastic. Europe is a pile of little countries and in each of them a couple of carriers rule like little kings. It makes for an extremely complex (and, consequently, low-margin) playground to deploy services. The US (as well as some of the huge Asian countries) have the incredible opportunity to deploy applications and services in one language through less than a handful of carriers to hundreds of millions. No such thing in Europe.

And this is why the US should lead in every aspect really: it is an evolved, competitive economy and it enjoys the tremendous upside of being (almost) completely aligned as to the framework: language, currency, carriers, billing systems, legal system, etc. This is the reason why the US has indeed leapfrogged Europe, the continent, when it comes to basic mobile applications: economies of scale are much easier to achieve there.

Software, Services, Interfaces

When one looks at Nokia in its current state as the sole indicator of where European mobile innovation is, one might be disappointed (as I pointed out numerous times, e.g. here). However, when one looks at how concert tickets are being sold via mobile, public transport, parking fees and vending machines all using mobile as a wallet solution, or indeed Obama making his latest speech available via SMS (there are more than 10x as many mobile phones in Africa than PCs according to Tomi Ahonen), then one can and should still be awed. And, no, in spite of its President the US is not (yet) close in this respect.

I hope, however, the US will catch up on this front sooner rather than later, too. Because of the size of the market and the aforementioned advantages, it would unleash incredible opportunities that would bring all of us fantastic new services and applications. And, Mr Scoble, it does not matter if these are 160 characters or polished web pages; it depends on what you want to do with it (as you, being one of the most prolific Twitterati, surely know).

I did not text anymore because I hated the UI and could not stand the clunky interfaces (in spite of T9; I’m too old, I guess). I started again with the iPhone. Why? Because – distinct what some people say – it’s a great interface: it displays the conversation, it looks neat and I have a full keyboard (the touch screen works much better than I feared; and I used a Blackberry for years and years). But that is not a question of the device or the technology, it is solely a question of the software. I would be much happier if I could also use my iPhone (or any other phone) to buy my newspaper (which I can with an RFID-equipped credit card in this country and which I could do in, say, Austria, a country with 2/3 the population of Illinois and a footprint smaller than Maine).

What Scoble misses (or omits in his post) is that the next leap in innovation will be a service-driven one (just as we saw on the Internet: first hardware, then basic apps, now sophisticated services).

Mobile has had the hardware phase, it is going through a “basic” app phase, and some European, African and Asian countries have entered the value-added services phase already, some years and years ago in fact! Compared to the US, they’re leading, by a lot! They’re perhaps just too small for the Robert Scoble to realize they’re there… But, as I said above: this is not about Europe leading the US (apart from the fact that it would appear to being Asia that is truly leading and has been for a while): it is about the evolution of an incredibly powerful communication device that is being unlocked for more and more applications and services; and this is independent from country and nationality!

Along those lines: why, Mr Scoble, should it be a bad thing that Europeans now “must” visit Cupertino and Mountain View. California is nice, isn’t it? Not a bad thing to go visit every now and then at all! We’re living in a large world, Mr Scoble, not only on a single continent, and mobile is a facilitator spurning new ecosystems, not only a device.

Image credit drawing: http://www.aartkom.cz

Carnival of the Mobilists # 178

By Volker

On 14/06/2009

In 1, Carnival of the Mobilists

Welcome to the Carnival of the Mobilists, which has finally arrived on this blog, and how timely, too!

Last week marked not only the launch of the long-awaited Palm Pre but also featured Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (without Steve Jobs threatening to quit this time), so the theme would appear to being set: it is all about smarter phones, is it not?

And, lo and behold, this is exactly what this week’s worthy posts focused on, and from a variety of angles. It apparently energized some of the best and brightest to set pen to paper (or thumb to keyboard; can somewhat come up with an updated simile, please?). So off we go:

We are first and foremost being treated (!) to another of Tomi Ahonen’s epic posts, this time a journey through the times of the smartphone, from Nokia’s first Communicator (oh, how I loved my “brick”) to the iPhone, N97. Specifically, he looks at how differently the concept developed in the US vs the rest of the world. He also tells us where he thinks the real future lies (hint: not in apps apparently…). It is an absolute must-read even if a) you’ll need a good cup of coffee and a bit of time to read it and b) Tomi’s Finnish heritage does shine through on more than one occasion… 😉

Ajit Jaokar’s Open Gardens Blog follows on this theme: he argues that the Web just moved and that this will impact the balance of power with the web winning (hint: this is coming closer to where Tomi thinks we’re going, too).

Peggy Anne Salz’s MSearchGroove blog lends its space to Ben Jacobsen, the former Director of Global Marketing for Opera, who has some numbers to put against predictions that apps won’t really matter by looking at the real value of the app industry (it’s apparently $3.2bn in 2009 growing to $7bn in 2013) and the opportunities for app stores (hint: it is not Apple that rules). He also – rightly – points out however that the fact that Opera’s Mini browser is the top downloaded Java application of all time provides a good outlook on where the real opportunity lies.

Judy Breck suggests that smartphones have become a defining tool to ensure social equality in education: she urges to give smartphones to Washington DC school kids to make sure access to information is the same irrespective of class and income.

If you want more proof on how the web enhances your mobile experience, here you go: Aaron Chua shows us some intriguing examples of mobile applications that combine mobile device functionality with the information available online. Geoff Ballinger throws in his comparison of the price plans competing in the UK with the new iPhone 3GS’s tethering option (just in case you were wondering if it made sense).

And then, here is a voice reminding us that there is not only the web to connect to but the real world, too: Andrew Grill gives us a heads-up on Unilever’s thoughts on mobile coupons. They realized that they might be able to reach youngsters who might not be so keen on cutting out paper coupons anymore…

Before I go, here are two very noteworthy posts on events you should try not to miss:

Caroline Lewko’s WIP Jam Sessions stage events on various mobile open source topics in Amsterdam, Berlin and Marseille.

And then of course Rudy de Waele opens Mobile 2.0 on 18/19 June 2009 in beautiful Barcelona.

And Rudy has a special goodie for Carnival readers: he is giving away 2 FREE TICKETS to both the developer day (otherwise sold out!) AND the conference. Here’s how to win the ticket: send your definition of what is Mobile 2.0 in a tweet tagged #cotm to @mobile20 before this coming Tuesday 14h (CET). Rudy will choose the best and announce the winners on the day.

Post of the week goes to Tomi Ahonen’s tour de force of the smartphone world (but he also receives a caution for being maybe a little too rose-tinted over Nokia – I am referring to their recent innovative forces rather than their early revolutions…).

Now go, click those links and dive into what will hopefully bring you (even more) insight and inspiration. Have a great week!

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/mg2lto

Qualcomm slowly admitting defeat?

By Volker

On 18/05/2009

In OEM

I know this is a contentious headline but one could interpret the news that Qualcomm is opening its very own app store (which is probably the oldest one!) to any device on any platform on any carrier this way. The provider will open its Plaza service to non-BREW devices (BREW is proprietary to Qualcomm). This could be seen as an admission of defeat in the platform war, which it appears to be losing against GSM platforms.

However, I plead to see the bright side of this: it is a remarkable move to highlight and capitalize on a piece in its arsenal that has long been industry-leading: Qualcomm has long been offering merchandising solutions that do not have to shy away of the cutting-edge app stores of today. The new Plaza Retail will now bring to Java, BREW, Blackberry and Flash (Android , Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian and Linux Mobile are apparently to follow) what BREW users have had for a while: a storefront, great device integration and flexible billing (micro-billing, subscriptions, etc). It also allows personalization and a recommendation engine (courtesy of last year’s acquisition of Xiam Technologies). And it is a very proven platform that has showed its worth on many a bill to developers (the content-lock is much better than Apples; which may anger some users but will be welcomed by developers) This is quite cool!

The Others: Where Android, Symbian & LiMo are

By Volker

On 27/04/2009

In OEM

The title of this post is not meant in any way derogatory but with all the hype about the iPhone it is sometimes easy to forget that we are talking about a niche product that will probably remain a niche product (albeit a powerful and cool one!). In the rest of the world (feature phones aside), a few consortia are fighting for the open-source market, which is – let’s face it – a considerably larger piece than the small premium segment served by Apple.

So, where were we? There is the LiMo Foundation, which is onto establishing a mobile Linux standard. There is the Symbian Foundation and there is Android, a Linux-based OS from the Open Handset Alliance led by Google. One by one then:

LiMo Foundation

LiMo boasts a membership based comprised of the Who’s Who in mobile. Powerhouses from around the world like Vodafone, Orange,

Verizon Wireless, NTT DoCoMo, Telefonica, SFR, TIM and SK Telecom, Samsung, NEC, LG, Panasonic, Huawei, Motorola, and ZTE (and quite a few more) are all in there. LiMo has released an SDK a while ago. Now though, they decided that enough is enough and that the world should know that their OS was actually making headway. In 2009, there will be new handsets based on LiMo’s s

tandards released by Orange, Telefonica, Vodafone, NTT DoCoMo, SK Telecom and Verizon Wireless. Now, that’s a statement. Non-phone devices are in the works, they say…

There are already more than 20 LiMo phones out there (without very many people having realized it). They include such mundane devices like Motorola’s U9, ROKR EM30, ROKR Z6 and ROKR E8 as well as the RAZR2. Panasonic and NEC pboth produced a whole raft of devices for NTT DoCoMo. See here for a list of available phones.

Symbian

Symbian of course is coming from a differen

t mould: having been (co-)owned by Nokia for, like, ever, there are already over 200m devices running on its OS. After going open-source, they are working on consolidating the sister formats S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) now into one. Membership-wise, they’re not doing badly either: they target to having more than 100 members by year-end. Membership with them is only $1,500 p.a. It remains to be seen to what extent they will extend their handset footprint beyond Nokia though. Little has been heard so far…

Android

Both foundations felt compelled to state their cause, also in response to Eric Schmidt’s continued mantra that 2009 will be very, very strong for Android. The Open Handset Alliance had gone off to a well-publicized start with the T-Mobile G1. They recently announced that it had sold 1m devices (regarding which some people pointed out that Apple shipped as many iPhones on the first weekend), and are now gearing up more devices for launch (Vodafone got its hands on the HTC Magic). Samsung, LG, HTC and Sony Ericsson have all announced Android devices this year, and the first Samsung (I7500) has just been officially confirmed.

Multiple Membership

Wait a minute? Samsung? Weren’t they part of the LiMo foundation? Well, yes, and that is part of the problem: a lot of the big players have their fingers in all the pies (and why should they not?). This is favouring Apple since they are a single organization producing hardware and software. It could also be argued that it is favouring Android because Google throws so much marketing and PR behind it. However, maybe not. The big OEMs and the big carriers all work according to their own agenda. And this might very well be a very different one to Eric Schmidt’s: to an OEM, production cost, stability and versatility without impacting standardization are key. To a carrier, a lot will (also) ride on the ability to customize the handset so as to give it a distinct branded feel. Less PR from someone like Google makes it easier to them to focus on their own brand.

So: rock-solid, clean code, transparent and clear SDKs, no hidden hooks will mean that a lot of the feature phones that create the vast majority of handset sales (even if sales of the “classic” J2ME ones had been declining in 2008 when compared to smartphones) will quite possibly see a larger and larger move towards the open platforms. It makes it cheaper to produce and, with Apple having given the world the app store idea, content should flow in sooner or later. They “only” need to keep the standards, well, standard!

The iPhone is of course looming large, and it is the one device that has shown the old school of the telco world how 21-st-century marketing can impact market perception and sales. They have also all realized that this might actually be a very good thing, hence the eager discussions many are purported to be having on getting their hands on the next generation. However, last time I looked, the streets were not full of Porsche Boxsters either. Quite a few Hyundais, Fiats, Peugeots, BMWs, Volvos, well, you get it…

Smartphone Market Shares & Growth

By Volker

On 12/03/2009

In Apple, OEM

World market leader Nokia had a bruising 2008, at least in the smartphone field. According to a study, the Finns’ market share in this segment dropped by 10% to a – well – still fairly respectable 40.8% in Q4/2008 (as compared to 50.9% a for the quarter in the previous year). Painful!

The big winners were RIM (growth of 84.9% year-on-year), Apple (111.6%) and Samsung (138%) although the latter grew from a fairly low share (1.8%). HTC was up 20% but its carrier-branded handsets (T-Mobile G1, etc) were not listed under its own tab but under “others”, so there might actually have been more (probable when considering that the company’s profits rose sharply in Q4/2008 on G1 sales).

Apple, interestingly, is said to have suffered a fall of sales during Q4/2008 with growth in that quarter driven by the Blackberry Storm, T-Mobile G1 and strong Samsung sales. On the OS side, Windows Mobile made headway, mainly via the successful HTC Touch line and the Samsung Omnia.

Overall smartphone sales in Q4/2008 were 38m and 140m for the whole year. This seems to tie in roughly with the numbers I discussed earlier this month.

The changes are of interest to the content industry, too. Smartphones make for a disproportionate amount of content consumption, and smartphones also lead the way for the new app stores that are breaking through everywhere after Apple showed its competitors just how much consumers are craving content. RIM is out of the blocks, as is Android. Nokia announced its Ovi Store and runs similar programmes with N-Gage, NCD and Comes with Music already and Windows Mobile has just announced the shop it will launch itself. Remains to be seen where Palm will go with its Pre and WebOS: it only had 0.9% of the market (some faithful Treo users!) and hence lots of catching up to do. And what about the newly coined JavaFX?

Here are the charts (courtesy of Gartner via Cellular News) for 1) Q4 2008 by vendor, 2) all of 2008 by vendor, 3) Q4/2008: by operating system and 4) all of 2008 by OS:

Worldwide: Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor

(Thousands of Units)

Company	4Q08 Sales	Market Share4Q08 (%)	4Q07 Sales	Market Share4Q07 (%)	4Q07-4Q08 Growth (%)
Nokia	15,561.7	40.8%	18,703.3	50.9%	-16.8%
RIM	7,442.6	19.5%	4,024.7	10.9%	84.9%
Apple	4,079.4	10.7%	1,928.3	5.2%	111.6%
HTC	1,631.7	4.3%	1,361.1	3.7%	19.9%
Samsung	1,598.2	4.2%	671.5	1.8%	138.0%
Others	7,829.7	20.5%	10,077.3	27.4%	-22.3%
Total	38,143.3	100%	36,766.1	100%	3.7%

Worldwide: Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor, 2008

Company	2008 Sales	Market Share 2008	2007 Sales	Market Share 2007	Growth 2007-2008
Nokia	60,920.5	43.7%	60,465.0	49.4%	0.8%
RIM	23,149.0	16.6%	11,767.7	9.6%	96.7%
Apple	11,417.5	8.2%	3,302.6	2.7%	245.7%
HTC	5,895.4	4.2%	3,718.5	3.0%	58.5%
Sharp	5,234.2	3.8%	6,885.3	5.6%	-24.0%
Others	32,671.4	23.5%	36,176.6	29.6%	-9.7%
Total	139,287.9	100%	122,315.6	100%	13.9%

Worldwide: Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System, 4Q08

Company	4Q08 Sales	Market Share 4Q08	4Q07 Sales	Market Share 4Q07	Growth 4Q07-4Q08
Symbian	17,949.1	47.1%	22,902.5	62.3%	-21.6%
RIM	7,442.6	19.5%	4,024.7	10.9%	84.9%
Windows Mobile	4,713.9	12.4%	4,374.4	11.9%	7.8%
Mac OS X	4,079.4	10.7%	1,928.3	5.2%	111.6%
Linux	3,194.9	8.4%	2,675.9	7.3%	19.4%
Palm OS	326.5	0.9%	449.1	1.2%	-27.3%
Other OSs	436.9	1.1%	411.3	1.1%	6.2%
Total	38,143.3	100%	36,766.1	100%	3.7%

Note: The “Other OSs” category includes sales of Sharp Sidekick devices based on the Danger platform.

Worldwide: Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System, 2008

Company	2008 Sales	Market Share 2008	2007 Sales	Market Share 2007	Growth 2007-2008
Symbian	72,933.5	52.4%	77,684.0	63.5%	-6.1%
RIM	23,149.0	16.6%	11,767.7	9.6%	96.7%
Windows Mobile	16,498.1	11.8%	14,698.0	12.0%	12.2%
Mac OS X	11,417.5	8.2%	3,302.6	2.7%	245.7%
Linux	11,262.9	8.1%	11,756.7	9.6%	-4.2%
Palm OS	2,507.2	1.8%	1,762.7	1.4%	42.2%
Other OSs	1,519.7	1.1%	1,344.0	1.1%	13.1%
Total	139,287.9	100%	122,315.6	100%	13.9%

Note: The “Other OSs” category includes sales of Sharp Sidekick devices based on the Danger platform.

iPhone Dominates the Mobile Web (as yet)

By Volker

On 03/03/2009

The iPhone has a meagre 1.2% share of the overall phone market. However, it has true worker bees as users. No, honestly, these guys are sooo much busier than everybody else: they produce a whopping 2/3 of the world’s mobile web traffic, or so says a report. Yes, that’s right. Number 2? Shared between open-source-newbie Symbian and – remarkably – Android with 6.15% each, which is, erm, less than 10% of what the iPhone accounts for (and in spite there being a gazillion more Symbian-powered phones out there than iPhones). Next one in the queue then is Blackberry with 2.24%.

Interestingly, the researchers find that the runners-up are quickly gaining market share, which begs the question (again) if the iPhone was only a big marketing coup: did people only need the Jobs magic in order to be shown what they could actually do with their phones (and, yes, did operators need Mr Jobs vision to realize that fair use might exceed, like, 137 kb per month)?

The answer? No! 4,000 downloads per minute are more than a marketing fluke! That web traffic is not a mirage! What the iPhone did do is trigger a stampede towards better usability, better discovery, a better environment, more ease. It is no surprise that the Google-dominated Android phone is catching up so fast (in spite being the youngest platform): Google itself has a knack for simplicity and ease of use. And from the platforms that have been around for a little longer, Blackberry (traditionally equipped with flat-rate data plans and affluent users to go with it) and Symbian (highest install-base on smartphones) are best suited from the pack to catch up quickest. The only question is the one for Windows Mobile (ooh, and Mr & Mrs Gates children are not allowed iPhones…).

The most encouraging bit of that report is therefore not another staggering stat on the iPhone but that the others are catching up. A race to the top then (even if some say that, content-wise, it currently is a race to the bottom; I’m sure that that will sort itself out fairly quickly but of this another time…).