31 August 2009

The Truth About Nokia, Symbian,
Maemo, Nokia N900 and the Nokia N97

THE FATE OF SYMBIAN FOR NOKIA SMARTPHONES

The Symbian ecosystem is the most complete OS out there, almost as complete as a desktop OS and much more versatile and portable. After 10 years of development, it stands as the leader in the smartphone world, gracing half of all smartphones made on the planet. Up until a couple years ago, it had no peer, and in my opinion, it still is far more advanced than its competition. Coming in a few flavors, its biggest foray has been the S60 variant, fostered by Nokia. Not too long ago, Nokia actually spent nearly half a billion dollars to buy out the Symbian partners’ shares of Symbian and make it an open source OS.

But all of the pundits say Symbian is doomed, outdated, and being replaced by Maemo for Nokia devices. We see the N900 come on the scene, and the “I told you so” band begins to play. But turn your station, because that song is pretty stupid, and the words may cause delirium and diarrhea. Ok, seriously, it is not true, and it doesn’t take lasik to see what’s really going on.

Let’s start with the money. $415 million in cold hard cash out of pocket, plus the near $325 million Nokia had of its own money tied up in Symbian Limited is a pretty penny. That’s nearly half the budget for the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, or enough to buy the Los Angeles Lakers outright and still have enough change left over to buy the Los Angeles Clippers as well! I’m sure Nokia would love to own the rights to Kobe Bryant and Blake Griffin. Imagine the marketing coup that would be. But what fool in their right mind believes Nokia spent such a massive sum just to donate it to society?? How much sense does that make? I’ll give you an estimate: None!

By the sheer amount development man hours invested and money involved, it looks more likely that Nokia’s looking to refocus and save money at the same time. Not many know that Nokia spent nearly $235 million in licensing royalties to Symbian each and every year. They also spent massive amounts of cash on research and development of the S60 UI. By them buying the rest of Symbian, and then turning it over to the open source community, they save tons of money developing one common consolidated UI, sharing the costs and labor with its Foundation partners instead of bearing the brunt of the costs on their own.

They also wanted Symbian to be a singular entity that would more easily attract developer talent with easy to use, readily available, common, and freely distributed application development tools, all in a community and Foundation-driven effort. While many say the OS is outdated, it’s just not true. It is the UI that’s outdated. The OS framework just needs a streamline and remodel.

Symbian was still the gorgeous Charlize Theron, but S60 was Charlize Theron’s depiction of Aileen Wuornos in the movie “Monster”. She was ugly as sin in “Monster”, but I still knew it was Charlize, and would’ve jumped at the chance to take her out on a date had I been on the set during filming.

It was just the presentation, not the essence of the OS. They just needed Symbian to go back to wardrobe and makeup, that’s all.

Nokia had long planned to revamp the UI anyway. They had already begun work on adding touch to S60 3rd Edition, but knew they wanted to go a new direction. They wanted to reorganize the layout and ergonomics of the UI. The price to do that was probably close to the price it paid to own the OS outright, so they probably did a couple feasibility studies, planned things out, and decided they could revamp the OS as well to make it easier for developers to make applications for it, something many developers have complained about. Not bad for nearly a billion bucks.

Nokia was quick to dispel the notion they were making plans for Android over Symbian, a sure sign of protecting the Symbian space. Symbian is too versatile not to keep, spanning all types of hardware and screen resolutions, something no other OS can claim.

So the real reason Symbian was bought was to save money and unify its points of connection to the consumer by making it easy to make the same apps available to them at each point. By making it open source, it allows the Foundation’s members to share in the development of the OS and UI, all for the price of two years worth of licensing fees, which it will also avoid in the future thanks to Symbian’s new open source model.

It also means it has more influence on the core of the OS, which opened the door for basing the main Symbian application development toolkit on Qt. Qt is a Nokia intellectual property acquired in its acquisition of Trolltech.

It is a powerful application framework that spans across multiple OSes like Windows CE, Linux, and Mac OS. The really good news for Nokia is it works across Symbian, Mac, Windows, Maemo, and Linux, meaning most apps made in Qt will work quite easily on its Symbian smartphones, Maemo web tablets and phones, and Windows netbooks and PCs, unifying all of its devices under one development toolkit. Since Qt is now wholly owned by Nokia, they can port it to other ecosystems as well, expanding Ovi’s reach to the entire world.

THE ROLE OF MAEMO FOR NOKIA SMARTPHONES

Everyone thinks Maemo will replace Symbian, but that just isn’t possible yet, and I don’t think that’s the intention. How do I know? Because Maemo is a high-end solution meant for the aforementioned profiles of Groups 2 and 3, and possibly 4 on a small scale. It will probably always have a fairly large, high resolution touchscreen, be landscape oriented with little concern for one handed operation, require a dedicated high grade GPU to handle UI rendering, and will usually come in a slate or sliding landscape QWERTY form factor. These limitations will affect costs and accessibility, and keep it in the niche market. I would even presume the N900 is an entry point for Maemo, and devices will only be higher spec’d in the future. It just won’t have the versatility or reach of Symbian. It has a better chance on netbooks and smartbooks, even desktops, but never in the guise of an N82 or E71. The specs don’t allow it.

The reason Maemo is in a phone today is partially to exploit Qt, and to incubate the apps needed when Symbian^4 is released. (Remember, the Qt apps will run on multiple platforms via simple UI reorganizations that usually take hours to complete.) It will also put the desktop web in the hands of consumers that may be experiencing it for the first time, something that no netbook can do well in emerging markets. It allows another point of entry for Ovi as well.

I’m only speculating on this part, but rumor is that Symbian^4 will have a UI design language similar to Maemo, which means they will also be bridges to one another, with no sacrifice in applications thanks to Qt. Symbian will be like a Maemo Lite, made for a wider range of hardware and screen resolutions.

NOKIA'S RELEVANCE IN THE SMARTPHONE MARKET

Nokia has made great moves in order to reinvent itself, and it will lead the way in hardware, app development, and services with a select few competitors. They sell more phones than anyone else, and will most likely begin devouring market share in 2010, as was forecast by Nokia themselves just 18 months ago. Anyone that thinks otherwise just hasn’t paid attention to the scale and reach of Nokia, nor the potential of Ovi’s brand and services. Only Google and Microsoft are in similar positions, and I think Nokia’s experience in the mobile world, with its massive R&D in that space, give it the upper hand over the next few years.

NOKIA'S FLAGSHIP MUST OUTSELL
THE IPHONE FOR THEM TO SUCCEED

There is the mistake that Nokia must have a herophone, one that is the class of the high-end, and it must outsell its competitors to succeed. I don’t agree.

Nokia battles the iPhones of the world with a portfolio of solutions, not a herophone. No one size fits all solution exists. Some have to consider connectivity, others screen size, and price will always be a factor, as will size.

Nokia’s multisolution approach is what has kept them the top mobile device sellers in the world, and until someone usurps them, they should keep the same approach. Its Nokia’s competition that must figure out how to answer their multiple solutions, not the other way around.

So for everyone that's emailed me asking if Symbian's dead, Nokia's doomed, or Maemo will replace Symbian, I hope you've gotten your answer. Symbian is here to stay, and Maemo will set a new paradigm to mobilism in ways we've never seen. The real magic is that Ovi will be everywhere. It was Nokia's plan all along. It takes a long time to turn a cruise ship, but I've never seen one get stopped by currents. This one's about to set sail, and the destination is everywhere!