Symbian on Tuesday released its second quarter financial data. The Nokia-owned company said that it bested last year’s sales mark with 19.6 million units sold. That may seem high, but over the past six months, 159 different Symbian OS-based mobile devices hit store shelves, compared to just a handful from RIM and one from Apple.
The most glaring element of Symbian’s release was that it only grew 5 percent over the past year. Considering mobile phone sales grew 12 percent in the second quarter, according to Gartner, and considering Apple is selling 800,000 units each week, Symbian may be losing its grip on the market.
But to declare the Symbian OS irrelevant is premature. It still reigns supreme in OS market share and even with stiff competition from Apple, RIM, and soon, Google, few companies have the ability to catch Symbian anytime soon.
That doesn’t mean it can’t happen, though. Apple has already sold 6 million iPhone 3Gs in the past two months since launch and there’s no sign of it slowing down anytime soon.
In order to see exactly what would need to happen for the iPhone to overtake Symbian in sales, I considered three scenarios: an annual iPhone growth rate of 300 percent, 100 percent, and 50 percent. To put that into perspective, expected iPhone 3G sales for the quarter ending September 30 this year should be 900 percent higher than last year’s figures for first-generation iPhones, assuming Apple continues to sell 800,000 iPhone 3Gs per week through September.
Scenario 1: 300 percent sales growth
The 300 percent sales-growth scenario is our high estimate, but considering Apple’s growth is 900 percent over the past year, it still represents a substantial deceleration. In order to derive a date for when iPhone sales might overtake Symbian sales, I assume Symbian OS will only grow at 5 percent each quarter, since it is a mature technology. Then I apply the 300 percent growth rate to Apple’s previous-year sales for each quarter subsequent to Apple’s latest. Based on those calculations, the iPhone would be able to supplant Symbian as the leader in the space by October of next year when it sells almost 30 million iPhones compared to Symbian’s 26 million.
Scenario 2: 100 percent sales growth
For the second scenario, I used a 100 percent sales-growth estimate. Maintaining such growth would still be quite a challenge, but once again, it may not be as outlandish as some may think. In this estimate, I used the same growth rate for Symbian as in the first forecast. In this case, the iPhone wouldn’t supplant Symbian until the end of September 2010, when it would sell approximately 38 million iPhones compared to Symbian’s 31 million units.
Scenario 3: 50 percent sales growth
For the last scenario, 50 percent sales growth was used as the estimate to see when the iPhone could conceivably surpass Symbian OS. The same growth rate was used for Symbian, but this time 50 percent year-over-year growth was factored in for the iPhone. Under those assumptions, the iPhone wouldn’t outsell Symbian until the end of September 2012, when it would sell 48 million iPhones in the quarter, compared to Symbian’s 46 million.
Will the iPhone eventually beat Symbian-powered phones? Nobody really knows. It might continue to sell at a fast clip and outstrip even the most aggressive estimates or it may slow down and match last year’s first-gen iPhone figures. But one thing is certain: the Symbian OS is simply not selling nearly as well as the rest of the industry and the iPhone 3G is outpacing every other smartphone on the market. Although Apple is expected to sell at least 40 million iPhone 3Gs over the next year, even that may be an understatement.
I can really see the iPhone beating Symbian. I dont really think that will be a problem. Apple seem to have thought about everything when it comes to the iPhone.. integration with other Apple properties, adding support for developers.. they just seem to be more in touch with what is happening these days, especially a lot more than Microsoft.
Agreed. One of the old-generation one’s in the present times is Microsoft.
Symbian has been there since a long time, but the buzz and friendliness of Apple iPhone can beat the Symbian OS in the near future, not very soon though.
And any prediction about the Android?
Seeing how hot Google products go, with the example of Chrome.. i feel Android might be higher in buzz than Symbian and iPhone!
I don’t see it happening any time soon.
The numbers above are nice, though a bit too simplistic.
Gaining 6 million handsets on the market in such a short time is not easy, but I don’t think it is sustainable. From virtually 0% market share it’s easy to grow, but there’s a limit to that, and Apple probably won’t be able to keep it up for over a year or two without aggressively innovating.
But now that they have changed the market, Symbian and others are going to react with their own innovations.
This is going to improve things for us customers, but it will affect iPhone’s ability to beat Symbian.
I totally agree with Tsahi. There is no way Apple can sustain the current iPhone sales figures and I don’t think the iPhone will become the iPod of the MP3 market. Concerning Symbian, Nokia realised that this OS was losing its share in the smartphone market and that’s why they created the Symbian Foundation recently to move towards the Open Source trend. And if you want to see a real competitor to Symbian, wait for Android…
If you look at the numbers slightly differently, Apple’s iPhone OS might actually be performing better for Apple than Symbian is for Nokia. Net out the handset profit from the equation, and I’d wager that Apple is making more $$ per iPhone unit shipped than Nokia is for each Symbian unit shipped. There isn’t a lot to differentiate Symbian from other handset operating systems so I doubt that Nokia is able to command a hefty licensing fee. Apple isn’t licensing their OS, but I’d guess that the net $$ contribution for the iPhone OS is much better.
Other issues…
Iphone is typically limited to 1 provider. Symbian os can be multiple products and networks so it will always have more coverage! Same with Windows phone.
Pierce
You really have to look at this problem from a global perspective. In the US, Apple has already grabbed a significant share of the market. However, Nokia’s domination of the overseas market has barely seen a dent from the iPhone.
This is simplistic. Mobile phone models tend to spike, then fade. Apple, with only one phone model, is attempting to defy gravity. How long can their momentum last? Look to Motorola for a good example: they came on strong with Razr, sold tens of millions of units, then collapsed because they couldn’t produce an adequate followon product. Mobile consumers are fickle, and the competition in mobile devices is intense.
Two thoughts – a) Apple is generally more innovative than any of the other handset makers, so as long as it doesn’t stand still they should be fine there, and b) Apple is creating a *platform*, so the community will do a lot of innovating for them. They just need to keep making the basic platform better/faster/etc and they should be able to extend their success.
SymbianOS is the leader mobile OS in Europe, Brazil and India. iPhone can catch Symbian in US but not around the globe.
Uh… ‘cos Symbian has so many wonderful advanced features and APIs. Yeah…I’m sure they can rest on their laurels for years to come.
Um, yes. Exactly. You can author programs for S60 in six different programming languages. You can deliver the code to end users without asking Symbian or Nokia. And all of the develpoment tools are available for free, and the docs are all publicly available.
Chomp on that, fanboy.
I am a pro-Nokia-and-Symbian user but i have to admit that Apple’s numbers are really awesome if we only look at the numbers of devices offered and the dates.
Apple offers one and only one device (well, 2 if we consider iphone and iphone 3G) comparing to Nokia/symbian and its dozens of smartphones since many years..
Now, i’m really wondering how the “war” will turn into when Google will launch the Dream and its Android OS…
w&s
As a SMARTphone (i.e. a phone where people install applications) the iPhone has already clearly beaten Series 60: Less than one app(!) is installed on all Series 60 phones.
This means that people use their phones mainly as pure voice and SMS phones and maybe some built-in applications. These people typically don’t care (or don’t even know) what type of operating system is installed. So they could run a proprietary OS or whatever but still count to the numbers for Series 60.
Not sure if you have got your facts right; there are several thousands of apps for the Symbian OS (not to mention Java and Flash). The E-Series of Nokia for instance, is used by business folks with productivity apps installed.
I think the logic is flawed – 2 models vs 159 models cannot deliver the growth nos. to outstrip symbian or handset vendors proprietary operating systems – it might lower some sales of high end devices for Nokia, Samsung etc but they have many more SKU’s and buying power due to their size.
Considering that one symbian phone the N95 has sold 10 million in a year, I am sure a million here or there spread across 159 other models will make it difficult to catch up with only a limited numbers of SKU’s.
As people have different needs from their devices, I cannot see a simple 1 phone strategy working to sustain the growth
At the end of the day lots of people want a phone that does things they need and a form factor useful to them – ie they may want GPS or a camera a numeric keypad or whatever, smartphones are fundamentally niche products for many people.
If Apples strategy does result in diversified mobile products – it might make sense
The company that has most to worry about is actually Microsoft who license their OS and dont make hardware, while Symbian and Android will be open in the near future.
I think the iPhone will still win!
There’s a few inaccuracies in the post. The iPhone sales numbers are open to debate… e.g. T-Mobile recently said it had sold 120,000 in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. Good sales, but not as high as you would expect proportionally.
Clearly wrong is your comment that 159 Symbian phones hit the market in the last six months – there were 159 in the market – the vast majority started shipping in 2005, 2006 or 2007. Indeed H1 2008 has seen relatively few new Symbian models start shipping (some in Japan, none or just a few from Nokia depending how you define things).
Even saying not ’selling nearly as well as the rest of the industry’ is misleading. After all, at the moment, Symbian is selling more day to day than everyone else put together. I assume you mean growing more slowly – which is true – but then the whole market is more competitive.
Sorry to crash the iPhone party yet again, but remove your pink-coloured glasses for 2 seconds and realize the iPhone isn’t the second coming of Christ. It’s good, it’s not amazing, it’s expensive and it’s not available everywhere around the world.
Lack of innovation, resting on its laurels and ( when compared to Android ) a lack of transparency in its supposed “open” OS are what’s ailing Nokia.
As a long suffering consumer I am just thankful the carriers and the handset makers are being forced out of their slumber by the iPhone and Android. Open competition on a level playing field is spurring new products, Consumer choices and lower prices!?!? NO WAI
you’re somewhat dillusional I know you are in love with the Jesus phone… although keep in mind that when talking market share there are a variety of forces in play. First saturation effect, second with only one device its very hard to satisfy different tastes… so Iphone will remain rather high.. however I don’t see it anytime soon passing symbian… not even close.
The US has been so far behind in cell/mobile technology – still are – at least a generation… you guys are alway so excited when something new hits the shelf, while customers in Asia and Europe have been using it for years… the Iphone might have some slick design, but in terms of technology and capabilities Nokia’s latest model smoke any iphone any day.
Like Nokia’s CTO said, every year there’s a new jesus phone… then we all go back to business… while the iphone is for a select group of people, the majority of users need a simple phone… they don’t need this huge brick with organizer features, etc. And that’s where Symbian kicks the iphone’s ass. So unless apple comes out with a Nano Iphone… keep dreaming your pipe dreams (how’s your web tablet coming along by the way – another one of those dreams).
Arrington I think you should add cell phone capabilities to your web tablet… then we can call it the “Jesus Tablet” and you simply Jesus and you can become the Number 1 in a nano second.. It will certainly sell like hot cakes and we’re all gonna be gazillionaires….
I’d back Nokia to win. The iPhone is cool for data apps but it’s a terrible mobile phone IMHO – bad sound quality, no picture messaging, a dreadful camera with video facility, I can’t text with one hand… I know you might say these are data features but the mobile phone is a lifestyle device.
I feel that Nokia, Ericsson etc. understand this much better. Apple’s iPhone is designed for tech-heads that don’t go to music concerts or get drunk in the pub. Try shooting a band at a gig with an iPhone or showing your mate a picture while holding a pint in the other hand
All Apple products are completely proprietary and it beats me why so many people are as enthusiastic when they’d usually be cheering open standards. Apple iPhone doesn’t support Flash either – that’s just a plain and simple marketing block to stop Adobe ruling the mobile apps OS market with Air and Flashlite.
Don’t get me wrong I have an iPhone and I like much of what Apple has done – esp. integration with iTunes – but it doesn’t deserve to be put in a pedestal.
Nokia is globally dominant because they’re available in more places and they’ve never faced real competition in terms of quality. Outside of the Razr craze and a (statistically small) contingent of smartphone business types, the cell phone has basically been a commodity, and Nokia has been an excellent commodity provider. There’s no doubt that Apple is making consumer appeal and software quality (not bugginess, but the overall intuitiveness and pleasantness of phone useage) a serious factor in the market, as evinced by the panic other manufacturers are in to market a convincing iPhone competitor.
If Apple maintians their impressive technology lead (I’ve been surprised at how comparatively primitive the software on new competing touchscreens is in terms of feel, integration, etc.) and digs into lower price points, Nokia will be in deep trouble.
the Iphone is pretty much useless, overprized and simply a really bad cell phone for most users.
For the couple Silicon Valley geeks and meat heads its the Jesus Phone, but for the millions of users in Europe, Asia they actually need a phone that can do the basic stuff that the iPhone can’t.
Living in the US you guys have no clue what a good cell phone is… and the IPOD is not one of them.. that’s why Nokia doesn’t give a shit.. about the iphone.. since when the day is over, the lights are off and the fluff is defluffed and the vapor gone you notice that its a lot of money for not a lot of performance…
Watch out apple… because Nokia will take the few advantages the iphone has (user interface) add it to their phones.. technologically they are a generation ahead anyway…. and kick apple’s iphone ass…
Nokia has spent nearly 2 years trying to mimic the iPhone’s “user interface” and the Tube is still nowhere to be found (and the few reports out there say that it lacks multi-touch and sports a comparatively primitive interface)… hardly what I’d expect from a technology leader.
Can’t copy and paste is what I call primitive. Can’t text message with one hand is what I call primitive. Can’t do Flash is what I call primitive. Password protection easily circumvented is what I call primitive. Can’t true multitask is what I call primitive. Can’t picture message is what I call primitive. Yes, that’s the iPhone.
Well, I don’t plan on seeing 30 million iPhones on the market any time soon, and I’m assuming that the excitement will eventually fade. I’d have to imagine that a large number of the purchasers has got to be the original iPhone users, and once they have all upgraded the numbers will slow. It’s still an expensive phone, so those numbers won’t keep going….
Jake
NoteScribe: Premier Note Taking Software
iPhone basically tried to screw the Indian market by pricing the handset at roughly $900 with a 2 year contract!!! Now mind you, India has 100 million+ mobile phone users — and Nokia basically owns this market here. So I doubt that iPhone can ever catch up with Symbian.
As a few posters have mentioned, I think you really need to separate the “smartphones” from the standard handsets. Nokia will be able to outpace nearly any OS when you factor in “dumbphone” turnover simply due to the fact that they so many more models across so many more carriers. I don’t think that is the point as these users are not the target audience of either the iPhone or Android.
However in the “smartphone” space, it’s a bit of a different picture. Apple is competing against Nokia’s stable of phones with a single model on a single carrier, yet they have already popped up as a viable opponent. Android will further challenge Symbian in this space as it won’t (in theory) have the same carrier and handset challenges facing the iPhone, yet will generate the same buzz and allow for the same level of user-customization through applications.
We’ll have to see. We can’t brush off Symbian completely, especially given that Nokia has recognized the risk and begun to take action. However, it may come too late.
It isn’t market-share, it is profit-share. Symbian will always win on numbers based on low price and distribution, but Apple is eating Nokia’s profit on high-end phones today.
The data in the graph and the data in the article contradic.
In the article it says “Apple has already sold 6 million iPhone 3Gs in the past two months”. The graph indicates that Apple sold 6 million iPhone 3G last month alone. Also, where did this 10 million figure in August come from? 10 million iphones is Apple’s target for the whole year, a target they have not reached yet.
Please correct or take down the graph. This is embarrassing.
3 things:
- those are month sales, not installed base. Evaluating the “death” on this terms is completely incorrect. Nokia, by itself, has +1 billion Symbian terminals out there. Although growing, Apple numbers don’t rank.
- Symbian might not be as flashy or user friendly as Apple’s, but I can hardly see a non-multitasking OS taking the lead as the future standard…it just won’t cut it to “simulate” multitasking.
- Symbian gathers the biggest developer community worldwide. Period.
Don, you might want to check your logic, man. Your reasoning reveals a strongly limited knowledge of the mobile industry -you just can’t ignore the underlying weaknesses of Apple’s OS –
…and an ill-fated US centric perspective of mobile technology -even Latin America far exceeds US number of connections and technology available – (although this seems to be present in pretty much the whole US mobile community).
-
—— Weaknesses of Apple’s OS ??? ——
Now how long do you think that will last? The iPhone OS will grow very quickly as the price of memory drops, the CPU-power/per unit of power consumption increases and battery power improves. The full Mac OSX could be on there now but for these very temporary constraints that Apple has wisely finessed. But this will change instantly as these constraints are lifted. Their OS is ready to rock when the chips and batteries to support it are available. The fact that others see fit to undermine their present user experience by over loading the presently available hardware resources in the name of supporting an unresponsive multitasking environment is to Apple’s benefit! Or are you contending the Apple’s full OSX would not be able to mach the power of the Symbian OS? Now if that is the case, I want some of what you’ve been smoking.
I agree with your point Andres but just a slight correction. Don’t mix up Nokia phones and Symbian phones, so basically don’t mix up the global handset market and the smartphone market. Nokia might have shipped more than 1 billion phone worldwide, these phones are not all smartphones based on Symbian. But as I said, I think Nokia still has a lot of cards up its sleeve to outperform Apple sales, Apple which is still a rookie in the mobile world.
@NoBS – For you name you do seem to dish out quite a lot. What with you anti-innovation fanboys, some folks seem to love status quo and not rocking the boat.
Features are nothing without implementation, what’s the point of 3g and wifi on 2.2./2.8 inch screens with keypad, which is why mobile browsing didn’t take off till iPhone, There are real reasons why iPhone is better for internet use and we are seeing that with Google numbers too. How many phone manufacturers delivered a big screen with qwerty in a handy form factor, or a super fast zero lag touch screen UI, full touch screen not some half ass finger + stylus laggy touch screen?
That’s innovation for those who don’t understand or ‘do not want to understand’ and keep on talking about missing features, fanboys and marketing betraying their own pathetic anti-innovation fanboyism. That’s why now other manufacturers now have their touch screens lined up and app stores too.
Where’s is Nokia’s app store after selling gazillion devices, there is none because they don’t give a toss for users as long as they can rehash and make their money selling the same stuff with .2m more screen size and 2x more camera they are happy and how does that benefit users? An entire generation of Nokia N95 has gone with very few using a ‘touted feature’ called DVB, so who’s benefited from that? And N96 has it too but few places have DVB and how many people are willing pay $800 to watch TV on 2.8 inch screens with so many larger options available now? What sort of feature is that on an $800 phone? Well that model of ‘innovation’ is history. At least Apple and Android will change the status quo.
And all those laggy ram crippled Nokia devices before N95 8GB? How are we supposed to use any features when Nokia is crippling ram and ruining user experience inspite of the fact that ram is dirt cheap, and selling you poorly built plasticky devices at premium prices? And Symbian, all those folks who disregard UI forget that Symbian is one of the selling points of Nokia but hello when it comes to Apple suddenly UI doesn’t matter? If Nokia had introduced something like iPhone first they would have charged a bomb and fanboys would barely hide their excitement whatever the price. The only new ‘innovation’ in symbian in the last 5 years has been drm and certificates from the users perspective. Nokia has held the industry standstill and has been profiteering merrily with stagnation, lack of innovation and rehashing the same things. So who is going to hold these companies accountable? Certainly not fanboys. How can such folks add value to any discussion?
Compare that to Apple who they have been held accountable for every single thing as it should be. Apple is under persistent and intense scrutiny from ‘users’ not ‘missing features folks’, so much for the fanboy argument. So sure go ahead and criticize Apple and there are many reasons too but keep it in real.
Let’s see: iPod, iPod classic, iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, iPod Mini (not counting the different “gens” with photo, with color, etc.). Then, iPhone, iPhone 3G. I guess that’s not “rehashing” the same things according to the Mactard above?
Roger,
You speak the truth. Whether someone is a fan or not, these anti Apple antagonist have to admit that before the iPhone the market was truly stagnant. I’m not suggesting that Apple invented any of the features that make the iPhone such a success. They didn’t, but like many technologies before these, Apple is the first company to bring these functionalities in a usable form to the masses.
We constantly hear the anti Apple crowd point out that there are more features in other devices. We always hear how Apple didn’t invent this or that.
I don’t care if it Apple or Nokia or Microsoft or Sony Erriccson that creates whatever function or feature. I just want my device to be advanced and functioning properly. If it happens to be Apple big deal. What must be acknowledged though is that over the course of recent history…..it has been Apple that has taken the risk to attempt to do things beyond the tried and tested. To push the envelope a bit and to excite the market.
All handset makers in the market today have been in the market for sometime now. Apple just got in the game. Posters like “Intosh” may not wish to publicly acknowledge that truth, but he and all the hate-it-cos-its-Apple crowd know that the above is true.
When the iPhone was first introduced, everyone with a pulpit pointed out that touchscreens had been tried and failed. They further noted that most end user would prefer a physical keyboard. If the iPhone hadn’t arrived when it did….would every handset maker now be producing a touchscreen model?
The iPhone has changed expectations. There will always be different needs for different users. Whether the iPhone is dominant or the N95 or the various Blackberry models matters none to me. I just hope that each company continue to push the envelope and bring these technologies to consumers and continue to improve them.
You Apple haters with your blinders on can continue to not acknowledge the changes happening in front of you in order to maintain your bigotries but, most of the buying public will go with where the innovation is and will not care who makes it. Currently it is Apples’ innovation that has the market stirred.
I have nothing against the iPhone itself. In fact, I give kudos to the iPhone and Apple for accelerating the mobile web trend. I personally would not buy it because it doesn’t justify the cost. But that’s strictly personal — other people has other priorities, other needs.
However, what I’m against is those Mactards, the hate-it-cos-its-NOT-Apple crowd, who diss and belittle all other competitions and make grossly generalized statement about how all competing products are cheap and crap and how Apple is God and the iPhone is JesusPhone that will just crush all those competing companies and products. These Mactards live in the fanboy distortion field where the iPhone’s blatant security flaw is no big deal but if found on other products, it’s just desastrous and proof of how crappy they are. Those religious Apple zealots are convinced that touchscreen keyboard is the be-all end-all of “revolutionary” smartphones and that physical keyboard is premitive and laughable; where in reality, physical keyboard has several advantages over touchscreen virtual keyboard (and vice-versa).
The narrow one-sided biased view is what I condemn and my comments are to show the Apple fanboys that Apple products are not perfect either.
I think the iPhone is in fact a “mobile computing device”, not a “handset”. Apple has their plan and they are executing it. They don’t care about “operating system market share”. They care about building a base of loyal users, using the iPhone to expand the Mac market, and profits. There has never been and will never be a Symbian powered device that delivers profits like the iPhone does. Mobile OSX will continue to evolve and with Apple’s laser like focus on their core OS product, it will be hard for anyone to deny them the market they desire.
@Roger: “Where’s is Nokia’s app store after selling gazillion devices, there is none because they don’t give a toss for users as…”
- you are definitely clueless. Nokia is currently reinventing itself to become an “internet company” -i.e. provide the kind of service we are talking about here-. They have taken some punishment from shareholders for doing this since it requires time and money to get up and running, and they are taking the hit and moving forward.
btw – Nokia is correctly doing with OVI what Apple failed miserably to do with MobileMe.
Read analyst reports, not out-of-industry posts…heck, read the papers at least. You are completely misinformed about what’s going on in the companies – Nokia at least -.
In India, people generally think Mobile phone=Nokia (and music player=ipod), very few people know other brands (it maybe the case in the Middle-East too). The iphone’s innovative interface did generate a lot of interest but with the poor pricing model adopted (8GB = $720) , it has not really created a dent in Nokia’s market share. Things may change if the price of iphone drops and the Nokia “Tube” does not release later this year as planned.
Windows Mobile based HTC devices with their eye-catching designs and decent pricing are slowly emerging as a credible alternative to the high-end Nokia phones.
May be.
But this Will take some time
May be.
But this Will take some time http://www.technobuzz.net/
WHAT THE HECK is that graph supposed to show??? It doesn’t make sense at all.
Symbian and OS X are just not comparable. Different things. Symbian is OK for simple phones but can’t compete when it comes to complex functions. Apple will have the lions share of the high end platform market, Nokia will continue to flourish with low end phones. Nokia and RIMM were caught unawares by how good the iPhone was when it came out. Now Apple is moving ahead and they are trying to catch up. We’ll see how they do chasing a moving target.
Nice overview of the current Symbian v. iPhone battle. The iPhone is a complete package: it is feature rich, feels great in your hand, and is the recipient of a lot of well-placed hype. And it has one more thing that sets it apart… a picture in the dictionary next to “disruptive technology.” As such, is currently seeing the growth one would expect from distruptive technolgy that has been embraced by a mainstream audience (ie. steep growth curve), as well as the the expected scrambling from the incumbents as they seek to remain on top. Will the iPhone continue to grow at this rate? I doubt it.
The incumbents are all developing their own iPhone Killers (I hate the term, but whatever) with a cute touch screen and a full feature set. We don’t know if Tube will be the answer, but if it isn’t, do you expect Nokia to sit back and do nothing? I wouldn’t. What I would expect is that they likely spent a more time on their OS tech roadmap following the iPhone’s launch and have multiple scenarios for for the next OS iteration. If it is not Tube, it will be what comes next.
Not everyone reads TechCrunch. Not everyone is a techie. There are average consumers out there that will gladly purchase a “good enough” iPhone alternative, which will surely slow the iPhones growth rate. That being said, lets see the projections on the low-end, but with a higher Symbian growth rate.
That surge in iPhone sales is a spike of pent-up demand for the 3G model, as well as bringing on more countries for distribution. I expect it will drop off and the iPhone will continue to be a small part of the overall market.
The other interesting point is that being a single device that updates the way the iPhone does will almost certainly affect its turnover. You may see customers hold onto iPhones for a lot longer than has been traditional with other devices. At least with Symbian there is a steady stream of new devices shipping all the time, which is one reason it has maintained such high volumes so steadily for so long.
For perspective, Nokia still ships 1+ million handsets per day to Apple’s surge of 800,000 per week. As Nokia continues to transition to Symbian away from its Series 40 platform, Symbian shipments will grow as well.
From developer perspective it’s lot more easy to work with single device than support several “similar” platform like Symbian 9.1, Symbian 9.2, Symbian 9.3, S60/UIQ. Now Nokia intend get rid of UIQ in future, but it still be selling several versions of OS simultaneously, and several not quite compatible devices even inside the same OS version. And Symbian development is hobbled by problems – high learning curve, poorly documented, unwieldy SDKs, “Symbian Signed” programm which explicitly hostile to small developers. Cthulhu stile developer relations, to put it short.
I will say it again, when apple lets you change your own battery(without voiding the warranty), then it will gain steam. Until then, no thanks.
btw- my wife has had her Google maps crashed since yesterday’s night (1st gen iPhone), so she went today to the Apple store in NY and the queue was still unbearable: they gave her an appointment for Saturday…and all those suckers are innocently lined up for that.
Fresh stats form Europe. This is how the iPhone ranked in sales against other handsets during its’ launch week -reaction in countries that already had the 1st gen, has been quite mute and are not included-:
Austria: #19 (16 GB)
Austria: #32 (8 GB)
Switzerland: #6 (8 GB)
Switzerland: #7 (16 GB)
Denmark: #23 (16 GB)
Denmark: #28 (8 GB)
Finland: #23 (8 GB)
Finland: #34 (16GB)
Spain: #48 (16 GB)
Italy: #33 (8 GB)
Italy: #39 (16 GB)
Netherlands: #5 (16 GB)
Netherlands: #31 (8 GB)
We should really define what smartphone means. When comparing iPhone to Symbian devices, iPhone has so small amount of features that it is crazy. Can you edit and print your office documents in iPhone? Can you run MySQL on iPhone? Can you run ANY background applications on iPhone? Symbian can run hundreds of background apps (check with some process manager, there really is hundreds of them) and the battery life is twice as better than in iPhone. I don’t even understand what is the point comparing these devices, compare iPhone to some f* blackberry or samsung devices. Nokia is so much more ahead of everybody else.
As stated above this is true for the US. In Europe the iPhone will never catch up it just came too late to the party.
Oh how foolish of all the silicon valley enthusiasts to make claims like this one and to assume that the whole world follows their way of thinking. Come on, travel outside your US boundaries, take a step towards europe, middle east, africa, india… and you will SEE. S60, Nseries, S40, Eseries, EVERYWHERE. iPhones? Nowhere. Not because we’re stuck behind, but because we’re running free upfront, with much much better freedom and choices when it comes to the way we handle our handsets.
No Way.
Outside the US, iPhone will hardly catch up, cause Europeans seem to be happy with their Symbian devices, why would they want to change them for iPhones? They are just so different in terms of functionality and Symbian offers much more options.
Now call me crazy but i still love my iPhone and i wouldn’t give it up to any other device.
And this is where you can get a free iPhone 3g if you’d like: http://www.pika...estRules.aspx?m
Gringo mindset!!! outside US Nokia is unbeatable….In Asia (except Japan) too..so I don’t see this coming any time soon, we are talking about 2 devices now, and 4 or 5 later…versus an incredible gamma of devices that today have symbian..
I just think that you gringos should think outside, USA is not the world..