Symbian beats Linux challenge
Rating: Doesn’t bode well for Google Android
by Tony Dennis
Symbian’s recent announcement that it has
sold a total of 30 million handsets in Japan was aimed at shoring up its
sales performance. However, it also casts light on how an entrenched mobile OS
supplier – like Symbian – will cope with the pressure from the likes of Google
Android.
Symbian quoted figures from Techno Systems
Research which show
growth from 50 to 65 per cent of all NTT DoCoMo’s 3G sales in 2007. Symbian
achieved this figure even though it is competing against a version of Linux.
That version of Linux comes from Montavista
and is not only specified by NTT DoCoMo but the operator has invested
in Montavista, too.
So Symbian has already showed it can
survive competition from Linux. Furthermore, it has beaten off the might of Microsoft which also supplies
DoCoMo in the shape of devices supplied by HTC.
What’s more, versions of mobile Linux will
inevitably go the same way as Java which originally promised ‘write once, run
anywhere’. Today we have multiple flavours of multiple Java. I’ll give you a good example.
Cliq’s Pascal Grieson proudly informed me that his company’s mobile Java applet - which runs on around 80 per cent of handsets -
had been successfully tested against three different version of Java MIDP. So
Java definitely hasn’t brought uniformity.
There are already signs that the web 2.0 itself isn’t as powerful as its supporters
think. Reports have surfaced that some web designers are setting out to make
their sites optimised for the Apple iPhone.
That’s a very strange concept indeed since the iPhone claims to bring the internet to
the mobile phone rather than the other way around.
I’m not suggesting an initiative like Android will fail entirely. I just think it
will take a long time to make an impact.
Related News:
Leave a Comment