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Symbian Blasts Google's Phone Initiative
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Nov 07, 2007 09:55 AM
from the well-now-there's-a-shocker dept.
from the well-now-there's-a-shocker dept.
nowhere.elysium writes "Symbian has suggested that Google is not experienced enough or capable of fully developing a workable mobile platform. Symbian's vice president, John Forsyth inferred that Google's interest in the field will also wane due to it being 'deeply unsexy', and that development is not likely for such a platform because "You have [...] a lot of zeroes in your sales figures before a developer gets out of bed."
In the same series of statements, Linux is likened to the common cold: "About every three months this year there has been a mobile Linux initiative of some sort launched. It's a bit like the common cold. It keeps coming round and then we go back to business.""
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First step for symbian. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. First they ignore you (Linux? What is that? Who cares?).
2. They ridicule you (Linux is like cancer. Linux is un-American)
3. Then they fight you. (Our ROI is so much better and we have a roadmap too!)
4. Then you win
It will happen to you to symbian!!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I've always thought Symbian should merge with Sybian.
You'd get a phone that'd be a pleasure to receive calls on.
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No one cared but the project is kinda moving forward with a couple of Linux phones also being available.
Now Google announce the same thing (which is probably how we ended up with 350+ Linux distros in the first place). now, Google is much larger and has more resources so I suppose next week w
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I would estimate that linux is more prevalent in the cell phone market than in the desktop market, so you're likely backwards here.
Re:First step for symbian. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There was a story here some time ago about that there are WiFi access points running Linux at Microsoft. The WRT54G access points are very well known even by people who don't know how to use Linux. Linux runs on various other embedded devices as well. Linux is big in the server arena, especially for cheap web hosting and such. Very big operations (Google, Akamai, etc) run massive amounts of Linux boxes.
The desktop will get there eventually. I hear more and mor
Re:First step for symbian. (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft does desktop, for the most part. In this, they are enjoying comfortable domination based on their success with XP, and have some time to turn around from the failures in Vista.
My point is simply that he's got it backwards- the cell phone market is much more promising for linux than desktop, at this point. Linux will really rely on the death of the classic PC market to enjoy total market "domination"-- or permeation, if you will- Microsoft is more vulnerable to the linux-based device market overtaking PC's than linux taking the PC market- if you're just arbitrarily anti-Microsoft you might like the see the captain go down with his ship, in this case.
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No. I don't support DRM, period.
If it uses DRM, I don't buy it or use it. If it even supports DRM (po
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You're clutching at straws here. It works as a WiFi AP, and that's what matters.
What is this "their code"? An access point that runs Linux has a kernel and software the vast percentage of which
Symbian must have some sand in their Bajingos (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Nokia did a "internet tablet" some years back with linux, and were surprised to find that tons of people are porting software for it (or writing new stuff) - much more than for any of their symbian platforms.
It's not always about revenue. The only platform that I know of that is more hostile towards developers than symbian is brew. Go and check the hoops you have to j
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Uhh.. what?
The SDK is a free download. How is that hostile?
You can program in standard C or C++. How is that hostile?
Compared to some platforms it's positively open.
Re:Symbian must have some sand in their Bajingos (Score:5, Interesting)
Did you actually try to develop anything for Symbian?
Well, I did. And let me tell you this: Windows APIs, complete with their haphazard organization and historical baggage, lunatic bugs and arcane undocumented extensions are an example of Reason and Logic, when compared to this positive 10 day old vomit which is Symbian. Any ole Linux API is like an Extatic Symphony of Cosimic Joy, Eternal Purity and All-Encompassing Sanity, next to this 10 day old vomit which is Symbian.
Hell, I am being unfair to 10 day old vomit.
You gotta be a masochist to develop for this thing, downloadable "api" or not.
The toolchain is fucked up beyond belief.
The API is a convoluted mess of overcomplicated certinisms, wheels reinvented to be square and with an offset axis, said square "wheels" within other square "wheels", and all existing only so that Symbian "alliance" can have NDAs, Patents and what not on this shit, which otherwise has been done a million times before, some 900 thousand times of which done much better.
Great majority of it is undocumented or laughably documented (they want you to pay big money for access to the "real" stuff). Most of what is documented you do not want go near.
The OS itself was designed by a brain-damaged monkey, its like a retarded dwarf cousin of Windows, complete with moronic "drive letters" and whole bunch of other truly imbecillic "features" from the early days of DOS, which even Microsoft doesn't want anymore.
You gotta pay money for application certs.
On and and on and on.
Or and did I mention that there is like 6 mutually incompatible versions of the thing in the wild, and about 8 different, mutually incompatible of course, versions of the "ui" deployed on various phones?
One way to gauge of the levels of insanity is the fact that there are a grand total of 4 (to my knowledge) languages ported to this thing, NONE of which has anything resembling something like a useful set of bindings to the Symbian API (Java, which is the only remotely usable one, has a very limited MIDP profile). Ponder that!
In short: do pay good coin for those downloadable Symbian-specific apps if you need them, because their developers have all been through Hell several times to make them.
What really kills me though is how arrogant and pompous the "designer" of this pile of pig manure about this monumental "achievment". Another, mind boggling observation is that there actually cell phone manufacturers using it.
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"Deeply Unsexy" (Score:3, Insightful)
Whoops (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm... A bit of complacency there too.
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In that case... (Score:5, Interesting)
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A lot of /what/, before /who/ gets out of bed? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing like building a big wall around yourself, then complaining that nobody ever comes to visit.
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Both offer full TCP/IP access last time I checked. Even the Blackberry now offers access to the TCP/IP in their SDK.
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That's a totally false statement regarding symbian. I downloaded their sdk yesterday from Nokia's site. Free as in beer, but it's easy to get. There are quite a few apps for symbian already and the sdk looks pretty well documented. I think there's an OPL runtime for symbian too.
and distribution licenses with the carriers.
In symbian's case, you don't need to go to the carrier. It's another reason why their OS is years ahea
Re:A lot of /what/, before /who/ gets out of bed? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why mobile development is in such a bloody mess. Phone vendors do not want phones to become a portable application platform. You can port your phone number when you change carriers, but they'd sure as hell prefer you to lose as much else as possible, for example your phone book and applications, and if possible the phone itself. I expect this is why J2ME is not offered in the same way as J2SE; the phone companies would do their best to kill if it looked like it was emerging as a platform which freed mobile applications from carrier control.
There's nothing really all that special about mobile development. Devices are resource constrained, but in the grand historical sense they aren't all that constrained, when compared to a 286 PC/AT machines from which many an entrepreneur made his fortune. User interfaces are different, but not in a way that a smart designer (who can be hired for a fee) can't take into account. Believe me, I've done it, and while it is easy to make stupid mistakes, it's not really that hard to avoid those mistakes if you have enough money.
And it's not like mobile applications are, in the current state of the art, all that wonderful.
The real problem is overcoming the phone companies. Google is in an interesting strategic position, because they have so much money, they've got huge amounts of mysterious dark fiber, they're making noises about being interested in acquiring spectrum. Maybe they'd have a hard time becoming a mobile phone company, but they could become a mobile something else company and by the way pretty soon that something else does the things you use your phone for now.
Smart people at the mobile companies should be concerned that Google's involvement in mobile technology, if not co-opted, could lead to a paradigm shift. At least in the US, the companies aren't prepared for that kind of competition. They aren't even prepared for fair competition in their existing business. They do their level best to make it hard for consumers to price compare services.
So, Google is in a position that Symbian might well envy. Symbian is a captive of the phone companies. If the phone companies don't want to play with them, there goes their business. If they don't want to play with Google, it has almost no effect on Google's main business, and Google goes back to the lab and cooks up a world of pain for them.
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Here at Brazil most operators sell their phones without any features disabled, for an example I can upload any application to my phone using an microSD card, also after one year all operators must unlock your phone for free. I think this happens on other countries too.
So, even if this Google initiative fails at the USA... it can succed at the rest of the world.
Re:A lot of /what/, before /who/ gets out of bed? (Score:5, Informative)
It will cost to buy a certificate to certify the app as non-malicious and fit for purpose, and without that the user will get a warning when installing that the app is unsigned. But that is a quite reasonable security step given that phone malware could cost serious money on a phone bill. But the lack of such a cert doesn't stop you from using or distributing free apps.
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[Citation needed] (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a developer discussing forthcoming signing options [newlc.com], which he views as friendlier to developers. All of them are gated. Installation on more than one device requires payment. Some capabilities require payment; some also require permission from the device manufacturer.
More developer discussion. [allaboutsymbian.com] Even "passive content" has to be signed.
Another developer. [antonypranata.com] The current process is "very painful". The new process has "no real plan" for freeware and FOSS.
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Re:A lot of /what/, before /who/ gets out of bed? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what he said - "supporting customers
"If you are a serious phone maker
But he does sound a touch envious of the lifestyles of those at Google - describing his own work as "a deeply unsexy job". Aww...
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You pay for the certificate if you want to start distributing commercial apps. That's no more cost than you would pay for a signing certificate on Windows for example and if you can't recover that cost how are you paying your devs in the first place? You do *not* have to submit the app for testing once your company has a certificate, as the signing application is part of the SDK. We actua
Symbian v Google (Score:4, Funny)
PR stories on slashdot = lame (Score:5, Insightful)
Here, to have a CEO call the mobile field "deeply unsexy" in an attempt to make the public think Google doesn't fit into it implies that he and his company are deeply concerned about Google entering the mobile platform market and shaking it up! As for "You have [...] a lot of zeroes in your sales figures before a developer gets out of bed," he's implying that it will take a long time to be profitable. However, I think Google has "a lot [more] zeroes" in its market capitalization and R&D budget than Symbian and many other companies combined. Thus Symbian's fear that Google will get into mobile devices.
So what? They're not doing it alone. (Score:5, Insightful)
John Forsyth, vice president of strategy at Symbian, the platform that powers many of the world's phones, said Google lacked experience.
Google has formed an alliance with 33 firms to develop an open platform for mobile phones, called Android.
Among those firms are phone giants HTC, LG, Motorola, and Samsung. Additionally, they're apparently courting Nokia, as well. I don't think that Google's inexperience in designing phones matters one bit. They've allied themselves with virtually every major mobile phone maker in the market. They don't *need* any experience within Google. They have it in spades with their partners.
Cold (Score:5, Insightful)
Lousy summary (Score:2)
But Symbian sucks (Score:2)
What kinda of operating system hides screen config options under the phone security menus?
Their whole UI seems to have been built by a randomisation script.
The technical background might be fine but when the user experience is so poor it just drags the whole experience down.
I own an Nokia N91, I'd add.
It's like HR departments all over again.. (Score:2)
The amusing thing is that experience doesn't necessarily equate to aptitude. You have to get into the game somewhere, and in a few years, Google WILL have the experience. You don't stop paying attention to good ideas just because they don't come from someone with that 20 year history. A good idea is a good idea.
Besides, it's just the opinion of one company; w
then why is the iphone killing everything? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Underestimated, again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Its foolhardy to make such assumptions and reckless for an officer of Symbian to make such statements. How can you do anything but take Google seriously at this point?
If google says they are going to do it and they have the skills and the deep pockets needed to do it: so why not plan on it and have product in place to protect your own company from it?
Because its cheaper and easier to bury one's head in the sand than face the fact that you have real competition whose goal is to make money on advertising by giving away an open source OS. They don't even wish to compete in Symbian's turf, they want to make phones for the masses to get more advertising clicks. By executing this strategy they will make Symbian's entire business model obsolete.
So bury your heads Symbian, we'll bury the rest of you later.
Fools.
Show me the yachts... (Score:2)
Google may or may not succeed, but they have moved the industry - the OHA members in particular - a long way in the right direction.
They have to say something like this. (Score:5, Informative)
Symbian was formed and supported out of one single reason: Microsoft
The mobile phone makers, that used to hold a stake in Symbian (Motorola, Nokia and Ericsson each a quarter with Psion having the last quarter IIRC) bought the IP of Epoc from Psion and founded Symbian, because they were scared that Microsoft (with Windows Mobile) would attain the same dominance in the mobile phone market that it held in the PC market.
That danger is over and Symbian ownership has shifted around a bit. Also Microsoft did not yet become such a threat. I suppose that in the mobile phone market there is enough space for everyone. The numbers of units is much higher than in the PC market and it is still growing much faster. Apple just joined it btw. And even if they were to capture only 1% of the world market, they would make a huge profit from the huge amount of sales that this would mean in numbers.
Same with Google.
Look at Nokia Tablets (Score:2, Interesting)
If Nokia tablets don't include a phone its probably because Nokia doesn't want to compete with their own NSeries. Why couldn't Google build something similar? They have the money, the best smart guys the money and reputation can buy, and don't need to compete with another device builders. Their are in another bus
Why Phones Suck (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope Google does to mobile phones what it did to online search, maps and blogging: makes them work by finally providing some competition in the core function without being trapped in its box.
He completed his statement by pissing his pants... (Score:3, Funny)
did anyone else read this as... (Score:3, Funny)
yikes
Symbian is right, because of customer service (Score:3, Insightful)
Why?
Because quite simply, google sucks at customer service. And the OS business is all about customer service.
How do I know that google's customer service sucks? Simple: I've used them for things other than search. Have you ever tried to get a detailed sales report out of google checkout? You can't. You can ask about it, but it disappears into the void that is google checkout's customer service. Can they tell you if they're ever going to have reporting? Nope.
What does the sales report include? Dates, amounts, and state. What about customer names and addresses? Nope. What about anything else? Sorry.
Google's service philosophy is "help yourself." That doesn't help when you need features of a product that don't exist.
If google can't give you a useful sales report for the last month, how can they support a mobile phone launch?
The answer, of course, is they can't. Unless it's advertising-related, google can't concentrate for long enough to make a mature product...or they're too arrogant to listen. gmail still doesn't have folders, which is totally different than keywords (which is their 'justification'). Yeah, whatever.
Symbian (Score:3, Interesting)
But the fact that they are "the best" also indicates in what poor shape the mobile OS market is: Symbian is hard to develop for, it's sluggish, it has a dozen different and incompatible user interface versions, networking configuration is a mess, even simple operations require expensive and flaky shareware add-ons, there's no command line.
The worst part is, though, that Symbian's problems just don't get fixed. Symbian right now is where Palm was a few years ago: they have a large market share, but they are so arrogant that they don't see how troubled their OS actually is.
As for Google's experience, it appears that they hired a number of people from other mobile software companies, and in addition, Google has plenty of experience developing mobile applications for Blackberry, Java, Symbian, and iPhone. I suspect, overall, Google probably has many more man-years experience with mobile development than Symbian's entire staff.
(*) Internally, iPhone is actually better, with its UNIX-like kernel and real window system, but the fact that it limits what you can install and do makes it overall less useful than Symbian.
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I say try something new! Google has got the the bank to try something risky and "unsexy" and if it fails, move on knowing that it's core is still making money enough for their private landing strip...
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What no screen shots? No docs? Not even a pretty phone to look at? I mean who really cares until they show SOMETHING!
The Iphone is a nice IPod+browser+phone but until I can add real apps it isn't what I consider a smart phone.
I still have not seen this SDK apple said was coming.
Yea I have high hopes but I can understand those that are more than just a little annoyed at the hype.
Re:Competition. (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. Given that it's Google, there isn't even a beta to look at... But this is Google at its finest -- stirring up a hornet's nest, dropping hints and outright misdirections, then rolling out there own thing like they're surprised anyone had ever heard of it or knew it was coming. It certainly generates buzz.
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