New Symbian phones announced at 3GSM
As usual, one of the highlights of 3GSM is the announcement of new (Symbian) phones by the main manufacturers. However, this time it is not Nokia but Sony Ericsson who has managed the biggest surprise : the W950 Walkman music phone.
The segmentation trend is hereby firmly established. 3 main categories have emerged:
- business: phones featuring a range of (push) email solutions ( Nokia E61, SE M600,…) lacking a camera
- imaging: high resolution camera phones (Nokia N90, SE W800i,..)
- music: high storage music phones (Nokia N91, SE W950)
The segmentation trend now seems to be pushed to its extremes, especially by SE: the W950 not even featuring a camera…Nokia seems to be taking a more middle ground position, embracing segmentation but only leaving the camera out on the business phones, and equipping all of their high end phones with WIFI. This seems to me to be the better approach. Even the biggest music fan does occasionally want to take a picture …. And I’m convinced WIFI will become a key feature on any smartphone!
Next to these 3 categories remains the traditional category of the all round high end smartphone such as the Nokia N80, SE 990 featuring high resolution camera, WIFI, music capabilities,…
Segmentation is an interesting evolution, apparently being driven by design and marketing requirements. The huge success of the ultra slim RAZR produced by Motorola has pushed other manufacturers to follow the same direction, with Sony Ericsson taking the lead over Nokia. In fact there is a perfect marriage taking place between segmentation and design: segmentation allows to leave out certain functions, allowing a less bulky and hence more trendy design e.g. no memory card, camera and WIFI on SE W950 resulting in a very slim phone focused on its main function of music playback. Again Nokia seems to be more hesitant, sticking to the old paradigm of the multifunction smartphone with some segmentation added on top: the relevant feature for the segment is made top quality e.g. Nokia N90 features a state of the art camera, but the other features are still present. However, this results in the Nokia phones being more bulky and hence less trendy…
Anyway, the market is going to decide which approach turns out to be the most successful. The point is that Symbian is flexible enough to support both models and finally seems to get the long awaited recognition for this.
Another remarkable evolution is the final emergence of UIQ as the main platform for SE high end phones. The fact UIQ 3 now also offers one handed operation certainly has been an important factor in this. With 3 phones covering 3 different segments, this is a clear answer to the S60 dominance of Nokia.
In the margin of all this came the announcement of the Samsung SGH-Z600 based on Symbian 8.1 S60 2nd edition. Hardly a state of the art device, but at least Samsung follows the S60 evolution - at some distance however - and is now the only credible non-Nokia S60 manufaturer, having launched 3 Symbian phones.
As far as UIQ is concerned, no other manufacturers such as Motorola and Benq have announced new UIQ phones yet , so for the time being SE now seems to be the only manufacturer supporting UIQ.
This confirms the observation that Symbian remains a European mobile OS strongly backed by Nokia and now also SE, respectively supporting S60 and UIQ.
Concluding, the full support of SE for Symbian is a very welcome boost elevating it above the status of an OS of a single manufacturer, hitherto Nokia. Depending on the success of SE - which I think is guaranteed - Symbian will now finally enter the mainstream mobile phone market. Any smartphone market share Nokia may and probably will loose will be made up by SE, so the overall Symbian smartphone marketshare will be maintained in the coming years.