the Killer is back!

Last year there was quite a bit of hype gathering around rumours of the iPhone killer from Google. When in October it was revealed by an insider at the International Herald Tribune that it was actually a mobile OS, it was pupoted to be Windows Mobile killer. People really seem to love the killer term, or they really wish some things to be killed (I know I do too).

But iDoubt that iPhone would be killed and iHope it isn't. Thanks to Apple, this toy finally made smartphones come out of the dull boardrooms and made them fashionable! Remember the saying "All work and no play makes a phone a BlackBerry"? As for Windows Mobile being killed, while it has amounted to little outside the limited US market, Symbian totally dominating the rest of the world, given WM's weak market position (and its built) it really wont matter if it gets killed or not. Just when the smartphone market has started to heat up a little, already some of the big names supporting Windows Mobile, like Motorolla is doing pretty bad, and Plam, the new Windows Mobile player, is closing shop.

And now... they say the iPhone killer is back. Thats right, the Android is back. This time its rumoured that Dell and Google are partnering to build the first "Gphone" running on Android. Like I had said before, this is not good news for the already shaky Windows Mobile. Android is open source. Developers take note.

There are couple of fake pics of the Gphone circulating on the net, but still interesting concepts.



Bilal
http://elanist.com/bilal

smartphones hot in Japan!

its official: 30 million smartphones sold in Japan based on Symbian OS in 2007.
Thats a ridiculously high number, considering those are 30 million smartphones not just regular mainstream mobile phones.

This goes totally against some speculations last year that Symbian market share in Japan may start to reduce because NTT DoCoMo had started to show some interest in other mobile phone OSs as well. But looks like NTT DoCoMo is way too comfortable with Symbian to show any real interest in any other smartphone OS, due to "The robustness, security and ease of customisation of Symbian OS...".

Certainly cant be good news for other smartphone OSs like Windows Mobile that are still trying to catch up(far from being a real competitor judging from the market share graph below), not because Japan is such a big market for smartphones, but it is has long been the most advanced market for mobile phones by far. Whats interesting to see is Linux has had a much bigger market share than Windows Mobile.

Nov 2007
• Symbian • Windows Mobile • Linux

Bilal

http://elanist.com/bilal/

Symbian is ripe for developers

all of a sudden things seem to have started falling in place for developers to pay attention to Symbian. So many little things that add up to a lot, and hard to cover in one posting. But the end results will certainly be exciting.

First off, the smartphones are actually selling much faster. Faster in fact, than laptops! According to In-Stat, "sales of smartphones will grow at more than a 30% compound annual growth rate for the next five years." and smartphone operating systems will grow at double digits each year until at least 2012. The devices will very much become the work and infotainment companions in the next few years. In May this year, Gartner predicts, nearly half a billion phone subscribers for mobile TV alone, by 2010. Still more staggering is the figure is that of WiFi phone sales whichi s expected to top $145 billion in 2010.


The numbers alone represent how big a market this is about to become for developers. But the platforms themselves have now become more sophisticated and ripe for developers with tools and supporting framework.

Symbian already has the largest smartphone OS market share by far. So developers would definitely be hungry for more options, tools and framework for writing software for Symbian.
Like the recently announced Symbian60 Touch UI, Sensor Framework and UI Accelerator Toolkit. You can find plenty of detail on this framework on this artcile by Rafe Blandford.


Red Five Labs has just released Net60 (beta 1) for immediate download. Net60 enables managed Windows Mobile applications to run unchanged on S60 devices. So developers can now use C# and Visual Basic .NET in Visual Studio, and use the .NET Compact Framework environment to build applications for Symbian devices.

PHP and mySQL are going to be available for S60 devices in early 2008, with full LAMP stack.

Even Linux developers will now have their greatest opportunity on Symbian OS.

and to top it all, Symbian has just bought over Beijing Genesis Interactive Technology Co. Ltd. (‘MoGenesis’), lock stock and barrel! It does show some serious development ambitions on part of Symbiam. I have not been able to find yet what this company specificially develop, but its certainly one of the leading developer of smart OS mobile applications for the fastest growing smartphone market. Interestingly, before founding this company, it's CEO Dennis Kung held two senior management positions at Microsoft Corporation where he worked for eleven years.

The time is ripe for developers to take this platform seriously, because Symbian is sure to become one of the most lucrative OS's to develop for in the coming years.


Bilal Zaheer
http://elanist.com/bilal

the Android is finally here

Less than a month ago I had posted about the upcoming, so called "iPod killer", from Google. Which infact is a software and not a device. Well its just had its debut! Yep, Google has finally launched its open source mobile phone OS and Google's CEO Eric Schmidt is really making some big claims about it. Thats great news for smartphone users (and I hope some day for PC users!) and certainly not good news for properietry OSs... well... Windows Mobile. The SDK will be out later this month and phones supporting Android wont be out till late next year. Google had actually bought over Android over two years ago, the interesting thing is, the founder of Android, had also started a company which made its own smartphone device with full email, browsing and messenger capabilities. Hiptop has its quite a few limitations of its own of course.
Did you know that Starhub had its own Hiptop device? its not a suprise they discontinued it though. The version pictured below is the T-mobile's Sidekick II.


So you think Google might still come out with its own "iPhone" or Windows Mobile killer device just yet? The smartphone scene is getting more and more interesting.

Bilal Zaheer
http://elanist.com/bilal