Is this lazy analysis?

The last few days has seen a number of sites pick up on the latest news from Canalys bout the shape of the smartphone market. The latest view on the shape and movement in Smartphones is that Apple has grabbed second place in the market with some 17% jumping over RIM and Windows Mobile. Getting detailed numbers on the size of the business market is very difficult and looking at the PR for this report I have to question some of the assumptions.

Whilst I have no reason to question the analysis of Apples success with the 3G iPhone I have to question the numbers for both RIM and Windows Mobile. Over the course of my work I has been difficult to accurately get shipment numbers for either of these companies, the Management of both are very good at not answering questions and the fact that the distribution channels are different to the classic handset business that sell to consumers. Whilst both RIM and HTC do sell handsets to the consumer most are business sales and are thus far more difficult to measure.

I do agree that Apple will have a fight to keep it's position as number 2 in the market now that most fans who wanted the God phone have got one. Since the period this report covers is the one that includes the summer I would expect to see changes in the next two reports that see Apple slip to 4. Symbian's performance as the dominant supplier could be interesting, this report shows that in the period 18.5M Symbian handsets were sold which is somewhat above the forecast given by Symbian themselves at their recent Smartphone show.

Giving Up on a Smartphone

At the start of this week Orange sent me a new handset. I decided that this time I would take the Sony Ericsson C905 rather than a Smartphone. For the last six months I have been able to access my Email via a Windows Mobile Smartphone, Sony Ericsson P1 and iPod Touch I also have a Mobile Broadband Dongle and so have been able to use my Laptop to reply to email even if I cannot find a hotspot.

Rather than carry power cables so that my main handset has a days worth of power I have a handset that has fast connectivity for the times that I need it. If this experience continues I might just decide that when my renewal is due on the other Smartphone I no longer wish to have such a device and once again select a simple device; I know that the Network would be happy to give me a cheaper device which it has to pay for. I wonder if the Handset guys have strategy people who are looking at the fact that we now seem to be carrying multiple devices becuase the Smartphone is not something that we buy into as consumers?

Over the last three days I have charged the phone once, I am using the handset to check email when travelling have been able to download Yahoo Go3, Opera, Google Maps so I have not given up on data but rather no longer have a Qwerty input device.

If I find that the form factor does not work then I will have to swap the handset for something else but at present I am happy to have a phone that makes calls and receives messages for a whole business day and I am carrying a number of other devices that allow me to respond to those messages that I see as important.

Maybe once Orange gets its mapping service to work I might discover that the battery drains faster because I am using GPS. But if the experience of my Nikon Coolpix P6000 are any indication geotagging will be limited.

I still would have loved to have been able to have something simple that would have transfered the content stored on my old handset to the new one quickly and simply. If only Cognima had been able to find a route to market for the software as well as service that is now Shozu. I now that mobyko does something similar but it just does not seem as simple.

Photo from Sony Ericsson Blog

Has Symbian not learnt from Psion?

Last week I went to the Symbian Smartphone show with hope, it had moved out of the docklands and the Handset business is facing competition at the high end. After 30 minutes at the show I was fealing that Symbian is at the risk of missing the party.

In the Keynote Symbian's CEO spoke about the fact that this year 50M new smartphones will be sold making 250M handset shipped in the 10 years it has been formed. He said that these numbers demonstrate to developers that by sticking with with Symbian they will have the advantage of speed. However when you look at the new developer networks what you see is a shop that sits outside the networks control and has very simple terms (providing that you are not a competitor to the main spftware).

Others in talking about evolution accuse Symbian of being bloted. Whilst long time watchers call the death of UIQ which means that the new Foundation will be based on the S60 platform. This means that Symbian is at risk of becoming a Software arm of Nokia and who would want to get in bed with the largest handset maker?

This years Symbian event was my fifth year in attendance the quality of the speakers this year was weaker than in the past. I would have hoped that in moving to Earls Court they could have got Senior Executives from Vodafone, Orange and T-Mobile they did not. This forces me to question just what level of endorsement does Symbian have? Having considered things I fear that they have little more than warm words.

The FT is reporting that in this economic downturn will hit the handset guys rather than the Networks. The Symbian devices are amoungst the most expensive and so are at risk when budgets are cut by Networks looking to limit costs. Walk into a handset shop and what you see from RIM, Apple and Windows Mobile all impresses more than the Symbian Handsets.

Psion stopped making PDA's when they were let down by Motorola on the development of a Smartphone and internal research showed that the consumer want a number of devices rarther than one that did it all. Whilst PSION allowed some excellent engineers to develop few remember that however did not save the company. On the basis of what I saw last week Symbian is at risk of being the platform that the train passes rather than stops at.