The dawn of Smartcomputers, S60 Touch vs. OS X vs. Android vs. UIQ vs. Windows Mobile
November 21, 2007
Access to portable communication, everywhere, all the time.
By the end of the 90’s telecom and information technology was tha shiznit of the business, everywhere you turned people were talking about mobility and connectivity. Internet was God reinvented and huge investment companies slammed millions of dollars in business which they believed would revolutionize how we lived and worked. Telecom companies promised huge profits and the stock exchange was glowing hot. Everybody, both private proprietors and investment funds were involved, whether they knew it or not in some way or another. What happened next can be described as massive IT-death, the false Gods didn’t meet up with the huge expectations, panic erupted as these heavily overvalued companies couldn’t show any profits. The investors fled searching for the next place of worship and most of the companies ceased to exist.
The ideas of mobility were somehow forgotten or put aside. The telecom prophets stopped chanting and instead tried to defend themselves and the millions they had embezzled. Some blamed the consumers saying they were not ready for all this new technology, some blamed the technology itself saying it was not ready for the consumers. As most times when these kind of things happen, the arguments were pathetic. Somehow CEO’s with fancy educations in economics and marketing forgot basic marketing processes; the consumer decides what to buy and the market adapts, producing what the consumer needs. The opposite situation is when a company produce merchandise nobody needs. As nobody will buy the merchandise the company won’t be able to make any money and likely cease to exist.
The 20 Worst Venture Capital Investments of All Time according to InsideCRM
- Amp’d Mobile: Received 360M dollars, went bankrupt 1st of June 2007.
- Procket: Received 272M dollars, was sold for 89M dollars.
- Webvan: Valued to 1,2B dollars, went bankrupt in 2001.
- Caspian Networks: Received 300M dollars, shut down.
- Pets.com: Received 50M dollars, shut down.
- Optiva: Received 41,5M dollars, bankrupt.
- Kozmo.com: Received 250M dollars, liquidated.
- Cue Cat: Received 185M dollars, no longer exists.
- DeNovis Inc.: Received 125M dollars, shut down.
- Point Cast Inc.: Received tens of millions of dollars, said no to a 400M dollar purchase proposal, later sold for 7M dollars.
- Etoys: Went bankrupt.
- All Advantage: 135M dollars gone
- Fast Forward: 54M dollars gone, company went bankrupt.
- Xoma: Never made any money, even though they started in 1981.
- Flooz.com: Received 50M dollars, went bankrupt.
- Vanguarde Media Inc.: Received 60M dollars, crashed.
- Pixelon.com: Spent 16M dollars in a short period of time.
- Bolt Media Inc.: Shut down after spending 60M dollars.
- DigiScents: Spent 60M dollars, ceased to exist.
- Boo.com: Known for spending 120M dollars, went bankrupt.
Things have changed, now - almost ten years later - the technology is more consumer friendly, most of the world is connected to the internet, wireless networks are everywhere and the speeds are ‘good enough’ for most consumers. Almost every person owns or has access to a mobile phone capable of connecting to the internet, even in remote areas of the world. Today consumers like me wants to be connected, no we need to be connected, all the time - everywhere.
This time it’s going to happen, we will become mobile all the time and everywhere using our cellphones, err no smartphones, err no excuse me… I mean smart computers. Some might say it’s already happened. What’s a smart computer? Well I just made up the word, but the concept has been here for quite some time. A smart computer is a device that gets you connected everywhere all the time basically. Smart computers are used to communicate, by making calls, surfing the internet, sending and recieving e-mails etc. Isn’t that what smartphones do? No it’s not. Smartphones are phones with computer like capabilities. I’m not talking about phones, I’m talking about computers with the ability to make calls.
- Traditional portable computers are big and not really very ‘portable’. We carry them around in a special bag and pick them up when we need to get some work done, usually working for at least one hour at the time. You turn it on and wait a minute or so for the OS the load. Next step is usually to connect to the internet. The whole process from where you want to get some work done and until you actually can get started working usually takes a few minutes.
- Smartphones on the other hand are basically phones built to make calls with, but with the significant difference that you can do other things with them such as taking photos, surf the Internet or send e-mails.
- A smart computer is a computer built to be mobile and with the ability to communicate everywhere all the time in many different ways. They focus on being portable and fast as the user carries them around in their pockets and use them for about 30 seconds at a time. At the same time they make it possible to do many of the things people use portable computer to do. You pick it up, you do what you need to do and then put it back in your pocket.
Google, HTC, Blackberry RIM, Skype, Nokia, Apple, Microsoft, Symbian and UIQ are all very aware of this, just to name a few of the companies involved. Ever since Microsoft went public with their plans to getting serious about mobility with Windows Mobile in 2003 the trend has been obvious. Apple launched their iPhone using the OS X platform, Google has big plans with the new Android platform, Symbian is about to release S60 Touch, Nokia is already ahead of others with their N800 & N810 internet tablets where they actually decided to remove ‘ordinary call functionality’ using SIM-cards and only use VoIP services such as Skype. UIQ is Sony Ericsson’s and Motorola’s attempt to keep up with the game, Motorola is by the way also flirting with Microsoft using their Windows Mobile platform in some of their high end devices.
Niklas Savander, Executive Vice President, Technology Platforms as of April 1, 2006.
Next week Sony Ericsson will announce their new online music service just as Nokia did some time ago. Nokia’s also been buying a series of companies who deal with online services such as music distribution and map services. Nokia’s biggest buy was Navteq which they payed about 8 billion dollars for, an amazing sum of money! Nokia will also go through a major reorganization starting in January 2008 as a step in adjusting to this new market with open platforms and smart computers. Another inidicator is Niklas Savander becoming Executive Vice President of Nokia’s new Services and software department. All in all we can say Nokia’s changing focus from hardware to software. Just like Google Labs, Nokia’s Beta Labs will make new software available at a beta stage, so that users can try them out and send Nokia feedback before the software is released commercially.
These are some of the things I’ll focus on when I meet up with people at Fast Track. All this is good news for us consumers, 2008 will be the year of mobility!
I’m going to Budapest for UIQ developer Fast Track
November 20, 2007
I’ll be in Budapest, Hungary from the 27th of November to 1st of December where I’ll participate in UIQ’s developer Fast Track. Fast Track is an event aimed to provide mobile application developers with technical and commercial information. If you’re thinking about starting to code applications or games for the UIQ platform - this is a great place to get started. The event has earlier taken place in Munich, Boston & San Francisco.
The event costs €99 but all visitors get an exclusive starter kit containing
- a free Motorola or Sony Ericsson UIQ 3 phone (a SE P1i or a Motorola Z8?)
- UIQ developer support ticket which grants you commercial support and you are put in direct contact with in-house UIQ engineers
- porting discount if you need to port your software from another platform to UIQ
- training discount in Symbian and UIQ courses
The agenda contains speakers from various companies such as UIQ, Symbian, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Handango. The evening is reserved for networking in an informal and fun setting.
I’ll be there to cover as much as I can and will meet and discuss Symbian related topics with senior people attending. Make sure you send me any questions or inquires you might have and I’ll try to get you the answers.
For more information about UIQ developer Fast Track visit the website.
Handango Q3 2007 Yardstick - Symbian content trends
November 19, 2007
Handango - the leading provider of mobile content released their Q3 2007 Yardstick today, a trusted market indicator. For us Symbian lovers, these are some of the highlights:
- Recently launched smartphone models consistently appear in the list of top devices adding software.
- Blackberry 8830 was the number one model when it came to software revenues and units sold. The Nokia N95 was the only Symbian device represented in the top ten list, coming at #7 by revenues and #5 by units sold. This tells us North America spends more money buying content.
- ‘GPS’ continued to appear in the top ten search words list where ‘free/freeware’ dominated, followed by ‘ringtones’ and ‘games’.
- New content added continued to grow from 2 159 titles in Q3 2006 to 3 261 titles in Q3 2007.
- New content partners declined from 236 in Q3 2006 to 149 Q3 2007.
- New versions and upgrades continued to appear as best sellers across all platforms.
- Top ten best selling content titles for Symbian Q3 2007 was:
1. Quickoffice Premier
2. Handy Weather S60
3. WorldMate Professional S60
4. ProfiMail
5. Advanced Call Manager
6. Ultimate Voice Recorder
7. IM+
8. Handy Safe for S60
9. SBSH Papyrus
10. IM+ for Skype - Entertainment is a growing category and is now ranked #2 after business and productivity.
Check Handango’s Q3 2007 Yardstick for full details.
Nokia 3D benchmark demo by FutureMark
November 19, 2007
Taimas at Dailymobile.se and Devin at The Nokia Guide published some cool screenshots and a video on a 3D benchmark demo custom made for Nokia by FutureMark. The demo is supposed to be used at E3(?). I bet some developers will understand the potential of the Symbian platform and Texas Instrument’s OMAP2 chips used in phones such as the N82 and the N95. Anyone out there interested in coding a game with me? 
I’m getting really excited about starting to play around with OpenGL again.
Make sure you visit DailyMobile and The Nokia Guide for more info and downloads.
I’ve ordered a Nokia N95-8GB :)
November 19, 2007
I’m really excited and hope to receive the device this week. I placed the order at Expansys which by the way has an extremely lousy customer service, dialed them several times, waited 20-30 minutes in line and then got disconnected EVERY TIME. I’ve also emailed them but have not received any answers as of yet. What’s even more surprising is the fact that they needed a copy of my ID and credit card + a copy of a bill with my address, the reason was to prevent internet fraud which is understandable. All I can do now is to wait and see, hopefully they’ll send me a non-wobbly device made in Finland, but I doubt it…
Update: I finally did get through to Expansys customer service where I did talk to a very nice girl. This time I only had to wait for about 30 seconds (what’s the deal here?). She said she would try to get me a Finnish model and that they would send it to me as soon as possible.
Here’s a video from Nokia’s production line in Finland where they make the N95 8GB’s.
