Monthly Archives: April 2009

Yesterday I talked about the prospects for Palm and in particular the chances of success against the iPhone. Today it is time to look at the other big names in the smartphone industry; BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile.

To the casual observer, the smartphone world must appear to be dominated by Apple and the iPhone, but in reality that is not the whole story. It would be foolish not to be aware of the iPhones importance and in particular the potential it has to dominate certain areas of the market. Let’s leave third party software alone for today because we know where we are at the moment- 1 billion downloads is a towering figure.

BlackBerry

The success of the BlackBerry platform has astounded many observers and the relentless growth in subscriber numbers and profits is evidence of a platform that defies the rules by which most smartphone manufacturers feel they should live by. The operating system runs on a core which is ancient by smartphone standards and there are problem areas such as lack of memory on some devices and few third party applications.

The reason RIM does so well is because the BlackBerry OS is almost identical to Palm OS, in my view at least, in how it works and it is married with good quality hardware which concentrates on special areas of usability. The screen, keyboard and battery life are almost always better than competitor models and the designs make the devices desirable by many. Throw in a super quick email service, albeit not a cheap one, and we end up with a brand which is better than its individual parts.

RIM will continue to grow slowly, but may surprise us one day with a major change. Either way the BlackBerry platform is going nowhere for a long time to come.

Windows Mobile

The Windows Mobile platform should not be doing well at the moment, but strangely it is. In a time of super slick interfaces and devices which hide the technology well Windows Mobile can feel clunky and slow to use sometimes. HTC has pioneered hardware design in this area and we now see Windows Mobile devices which are almost unrecognisable from only 2 years ago. Versions 6.5 and 7 will no doubt make a big difference and it is likely that there will long be a place for a platform which includes so many features and more than enough hardware manufacturers to continually breathe new life when needed.

Symbian

This one is difficult. The E71 is an example of how well Nokia can build hardware, but somewhere along the line it forgot to make the software as appealing. Symbian OS is a stable and solid platform which performs well in the entertainment areas as well as the business side, but it feels as though there is no real direction at the moment. Touch has been added to the latest 5th edition, but that has moved the platform back in my view with a whole new process of development required again to iron out the quirks.

There is a feeling that Nokia is trying too hard to encroach on the Apple market when RIM has shown that you sometimes need to be different to carve your own niche. Imitating a competitor only makes the original look better…

Android

Android is potentially going to be one of the big boys in the smartphone arena. With Google and HTC involved it has got off to a great start and the OS has managed to stave off the deserved criticism of the G1. As new hardware arrives and the OS is improved, the potential for huge sales is most definitely there.

I must admit to not having spent much time with the platform, but in the small amount of time I have used it I can see great things happening here.

Conclusion

There is none. As you can see there is no way to predict who will win and who will lose, but I did struggle to see why any would fail. If you stop time today they all have a chance of dominating, but maybe none of them need to. It is feasible that the smartphone market is one of few technical industries which can cope with so many players and just maybe they will all have a long life.