Sony Ericsson abandons Symbian for Android and WP7 • Hacker News Board

Re: Sony Ericsson abandons Symbian for Android and WP7

#11

Post by blub » Sat, Sep 25, 2010, 5:15 PM UTC

pietrofmaggi wrote: post #4

Is still Sony-Ericsson relevant on the smartphone market? Android phones made by SE are still based on the 1.5, 1.6 version and even the top of the noch, the Xperia X10, will not receive 2.1 till end of october... It's sad but SE will not be missed by Symbian.

I used to have one of their older Symbian phones and my impression was that there was a lot of potential there but ultimately they couldn't pull it off.

This certainly isn't good news for Symbian, but I will hardly miss Sony Ericsson: regardless of the OS, they somehow manage to screw up a perfectly good smartphone.

Re: Sony Ericsson abandons Symbian for Android and WP7

#12

Post by drawkbox » Sat, Sep 25, 2010, 5:19 PM UTC

It's all about developers baby http://metrics.admob.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/appceler....

All the developers are over at iOS and Android. There are still some developers left over in the RIM and Windows Phone camp.

I am an iOS dev, Android dev and Windows Phone dev spending my time in that order. And most of that is on the one with the best market.

All the coup de tats in technology, an initial phase is stealing/attracting developers. Then comes the apps that people want. Then come thy platform and market. Rinse repeat. It is no longer just a phone strategy.

Symbian, Thy Game is Over. Nokia can maybe re-emerge as they still sell well, but seriously setback now.

Re: Sony Ericsson abandons Symbian for Android and WP7

#13

Post by krig » Sat, Sep 25, 2010, 5:25 PM UTC

blub wrote: post #10

auxbuss wrote: post #2

Symbian is dead [0]. It has been for a while. And Nokia will be too unless it adopts a new strategy very quickly. The figures from the article make this crystal clear: "Symbian's global market share has gone from 51 percent in the second quarter of 2009 to 41 percent in the same period of 2010". It's equally clear that it is Android that has hastened its demise. It am still astonished when I remember Nokia buying (th…

More nonsense from the people that can't bother with studying the subject even a bit before speaking. You seem to be unaware of the developments with Nokia and Symbian for the past one or two years. They are making an impressive effort to engage developers and they have made the development much more simpler and straightforward. People that have been developing for Android/iPhone have told me that the Qt SDK is compe…

Impressive efforts can still come to nothing, and so far the numbers aren't favorable. I got and started developing for the N900 when it came out, because I absolutely support the effort of truly being open source that Nokia is betting on.

It's just not working out so far. There are no users, the platform is immature, the N900 is not a good phone for users or developers, and most importantly: the Ovi Store is terrible. I released one piece of open source software and gave up on the platform after that experience.

Absolutely, anything can happen and Nokia do still have massive market share. I just don't see how they can catch up to Android and iOS at this point, massive effort or not.

Re: Sony Ericsson abandons Symbian for Android and WP7

#14

Post by davidw » Sat, Sep 25, 2010, 5:27 PM UTC

ugh wrote: post #9

davidw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, for the sake of argument: there are a ton of people in the world who cannot afford a high end iPhone or even Android system. Are they not a viable market? I'm not sure whether Symbian is the best OS there, either, to be honest, but I do think that market bears consideration.

Don’t you think that really cheap Android phones will be a possibility in one to two years? That seems plausible to me.

1 or 2 years? No. Lots of cheap (and some that aren't even all that cheap) Nokia phones here in Italy still are still sold with S40, which is the step below Symbian. And that's still in "the west". I don't know what phones are like in places like India, but I assume that the low end is fairly low end...

Re: Sony Ericsson abandons Symbian for Android and WP7

#15

Post by aberkowitz » Sat, Sep 25, 2010, 5:32 PM UTC

They're not doing well, but they have 41% of the market share? Apple and Google dream of having that kind of market share.

Re: Sony Ericsson abandons Symbian for Android and WP7

#16

Post by ugh » Sat, Sep 25, 2010, 5:38 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #14

ugh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t you think that really cheap Android phones will be a possibility in one to two years? That seems plausible to me.

1 or 2 years? No. Lots of cheap (and some that aren't even all that cheap) Nokia phones here in Italy still are still sold with S40, which is the step below Symbian. And that's still in "the west". I don't know what phones are like in places like India, but I assume that the low end is fairly low end...

I have no trouble at all imagining that 100€ (unsubsidized) Android phones will be available soon. You can buy a 210€ (unsubsidized) phone from HTC right now on Amazon. That’s not far off.

That’s not a sudden death – I’m pretty sure that you will be able to buy Symbian phones in two years – but I think that there will be far less dumbphones in the future.

Re: Sony Ericsson abandons Symbian for Android and WP7

#17

Post by blub » Sat, Sep 25, 2010, 6:15 PM UTC

krig wrote: post #13

blub wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More nonsense from the people that can't bother with studying the subject even a bit before speaking. You seem to be unaware of the developments with Nokia and Symbian for the past one or two years. They are making an impressive effort to engage developers and they have made the development much more simpler and straightforward. People that have been developing for Android/iPhone have told me that the Qt SDK is compe…

Impressive efforts can still come to nothing, and so far the numbers aren't favorable. I got and started developing for the N900 when it came out, because I absolutely support the effort of truly being open source that Nokia is betting on. It's just not working out so far. There are no users, the platform is immature, the N900 is not a good phone for users or developers, and most importantly: the Ovi Store is terribl…

From what I've seen with the N8 prototypes, it looks, feels better than Symbian 5th and it's faster too. Some people have been using the N8 more than myself and told me that they are happy with them. Still, anything can happen :)

N900 was a cool project, but they didn't take it all the way to a commercial product IMO. It registered poorer sales than Symbian and it's always a bit behind when it comes to services & software support. A hacker-friendly and truly open source project, but I don't think that they wanted to invest too much in it, they were probably testing the waters for MeeGo.

I'm curious, why do you say that the Ovi store is terrible?

Re: Sony Ericsson abandons Symbian for Android and WP7

#18

Post by stuaxo » Sat, Sep 25, 2010, 6:36 PM UTC

MalcUK wrote: post #5

Sony Ericsson isn't that heavily into Symbian anyway. Most of their phones use a Java platform run on top of an OS - Symbian being one of the OSs, but they also use proprietary OSs for the cheaper phones. It was Java that was their focus. They are just riding the Android and Win7 wave, while the competition isn't too high, and in the long term, I predict they will focus on their own platforms again. There's no other…

They always seemed pretty halfhearted about symbian I never saw promotion in the same way as their windows phones for instance.

Re: Sony Ericsson abandons Symbian for Android and WP7

#19

Post by stuaxo » Sat, Sep 25, 2010, 6:38 PM UTC

aberkowitz wrote: post #15

They're not doing well, but they have 41% of the market share? Apple and Google dream of having that kind of market share.

Exactly. Also it seems that the UI is one reason symbian phones seemed to run so slowly - with any luck Qt based phones will run quicker.

Also, it shouldn't be too hard to target Symbian and Meego from the same codebase.

Coding for Symbian is not supposed to be too much fun, having good tools is half the battle and I expect the Qt tools to help, whether it'll be enough remains to be seen.

Re: Sony Ericsson abandons Symbian for Android and WP7

#20

Post by barrkel » Sat, Sep 25, 2010, 6:50 PM UTC

krig wrote: post #13

blub wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More nonsense from the people that can't bother with studying the subject even a bit before speaking. You seem to be unaware of the developments with Nokia and Symbian for the past one or two years. They are making an impressive effort to engage developers and they have made the development much more simpler and straightforward. People that have been developing for Android/iPhone have told me that the Qt SDK is compe…

Impressive efforts can still come to nothing, and so far the numbers aren't favorable. I got and started developing for the N900 when it came out, because I absolutely support the effort of truly being open source that Nokia is betting on. It's just not working out so far. There are no users, the platform is immature, the N900 is not a good phone for users or developers, and most importantly: the Ovi Store is terribl…

Market share for a phone which is not used for purchasing many third-party applications isn't structurally very sticky. If it's a commodity appliance-like device with, at best, Google Maps and a ringtone or two, there's no real incentive to choose the same manufacturer for your next phone, apart from brand identity and UI familiarity.

It's pretty different with iOS and Android if you've invested much in applications. The platform effect kicks in, along with the network effect of the application markets, and makes the consumer increasingly sticky depending on how involved they are in purchasing third-party apps.