NewLC - In-house OS preferred to Symbian OS ? - Comments

Re: In-house OS preferred to Symbian OS ?

rbrunner — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 19:32:38 +0100

Quote

I was thinking they would port Nokia OS on all their models on top of which S60 and other will lie instead of having the underlying Symbian OS ?

I think I know what you refer to: The idea/opinion of some "analysts" that Symbian could take S60 and change the underlying OS, i.e. let S60 run on top of Linux (or whatever) instead of Symbian.

Anybody who programs Symbian and S60 sees clearly the many, many ways these two things are deeply connected with each other. Somebody with the idea that S60 could live without Symbian underneath simply does not know what he or she is talking about.

So not to worry about that one.

But as I said: If you want to worry, you can worry about a lot of things that would be technically feasible and have a certain probability. After all, Nokia just dumped S80! (The new "Communicator" runs S60.) And the Nokia N800 Internet tablet neither runs Symbian nor S60. Search for cover, the sky is falling!

Assume, for brainstorming's sake, that Nokia goes out of business. Tomorrow they announce bankruptcy. Just like that, puff, gone. It would *still* be possible to write a good program for all the millions of Nokia smartphones that are already sold and in the hands of people, and get rich by doing so, just based on those people.

Re: In-house OS preferred to Symbian OS ?

anjanesh — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 17:44:13 +0100

Quote from: sysctl

Oh and look at Nokia's quarterly report, I highly doubt they will suddenly abandon Symbian and switch to Linux any time soon. Besides they've got 41% in Symbian, what are they going to do with it?

I was thinking they would port Nokia OS on all their models on top of which S60 and other will lie instead of having the underlying Symbian OS ?

Re: In-house OS preferred to Symbian OS ?

sysctl-forum — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 17:29:39 +0100

I call bunk.

I've seen this submission too and the title has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the content of the articles linked, just read them. Only the last article describes what developers think about Symbian C++, but it boils down to "crippled C++" and "bloody descriptors". Also, if you look at the site itself (and the article titles specifically), it is strongly pro-Apple, so expect bashing of other platforms.

PS
Oh and look at Nokia's quarterly report, I highly doubt they will suddenly abandon Symbian and switch to Linux any time soon. Besides they've got 41% in Symbian, what are they going to do with it?

Re: In-house OS preferred to Symbian OS ?

rbrunner — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 08:14:21 +0100

The world of Smartphone operating systems is a complete mess, with so many operating systems, companies, and conflicting interests all around. Give me any opinion about any of them that you can come up with, and I will probably be able to provide an analyst or blogger or "insider" that convincingly argues pro and another one who convincingly argues contra.

I see this as a sure way to lose one's mental sanity.

I propose to step back and try to get a higher view of the whole thing: Why do you want to hear opinions about the Slashdot piece? Probably because you try to find out where Symbian and its market share will likely go, so that you can decide which horse to bet on. If Symbian secretly (for now) hates Symbian, maybe tomorrow they will openly hate it, and then on the day after tomorrow, finally leave it in the dust, and where does that leave you should you happen to be a Symbian programmer ...

Well, yes, maybe. Or maybe mobile Linux flops. Or maybe iPhone flops. Or maybe smartphones flop altogether because people are just content with dumb feature phones, thank you very much. Or smartphones thrive, with whatever OS, but you as a third-party programmer starve to death because nobody buys any additional software for their phones.

As I said, a fine way to loose one's sanity.

My personal conclusion, and advice: Take any platform that suits you and has a reasonable market share. Then try to write an application for it that is so attractive that you will capture a good portion of the whole market with it.

Example: There are maybe around 1 billion mobile phones in use right now worldwide. I estimate that 10 million of them could be UIQ smartphones. That's a tiny 1%. But sell a program to only 1% of those UIQ smartphone owners, hey, that's 100'000 copies, and you will be a rich man.

This way you will invest your energy in making a good application, and you can leave the worrying to all the Slashdotters

In-house OS preferred to Symbian OS ?

anjanesh — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 04:38:35 +0100