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Series60, Series80 and UIQ


Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Nokia leaves Symbian for Linux?


First of all the answer. Impossible!
This started with a recent article from ARCchart which says that Nokia could use Linux ( like Palm will do in the future with their handhelds ) for the Series60 platform.
The main reason for this was that Nokia, even if it owns about 50% of Symbian Ltd, pays a 5$ license on every phone sold with Symbian OS. This 5$ fee is insignificant thinking that the other parts of a Series60 phone usually cost way over 100$.
Another reason was that Nokia has developed the Nokia 770 tablet on Linux instead of Symbian OS. The reason why Nokia did this is because Linux is better for this job. Nokia 770 is not even a phone. Is a totally different gadget. For such a device Linux is a big advantage because with a small effort they will port open-source programs to Nokia 770's proprietary Linux.
I find the migration, for Nokia's Series60, impossible because Nokia is just doing a great job with Series60 now. They have 75% of the SmartPhone market. This shows that this Symbian OS - Nokia formula is a great one and Nokia does not want to lose it's market share with such a switch

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Smartphone sales doubled in second quarter


Symbian extends its market share lead over Microsoft and Palm, according to the latest worldwide market share study.
Worldwide shipments of smartphones more than doubled in the second quarter of this year compared to the same quarter a year ago to 12 million now, with less than 6 million a year ago. I find this to be very good news especially for the Symbian market which has increased to 76% compared to Linux 13%, PalmOS 4%, Windows 4% and RIM 1%.
Nokia ships now 63% of all mobile devices running an OS, compared to Microsoft 16% and Palm 10%.
Also Nokia increased it's market share from 33% to 55%.
This is very good news for Symbian phone owners and especially for Nokia Series60 owners