Nokia seems to be winning left-right-center. First, it had an excellent Q1 report; particularly when compared to Samsung and Sony Ericsson. Second, it has -finally- announced a new luxury mobile (yes, we're biased). Third, canalys is reporting that Nokia has a 50% market share in the smart mobile device segment.
The coverage by EE Times is representative of the general reaction to the third point: "Nokia and Symbian now dominate the worldwide smartphone market."
We would like to agree wholeheartedly, but ...
Nokia seems to be winning left-right-center. First, it had an excellent Q1 report; particularly when compared to Samsung and Sony Ericsson. Second, it has -finally- announced a new luxury mobile (yes, we're biased). Third, canalys is reporting that Nokia has a 50% market share in the smart mobile device segment.
The coverage by EE Times is representative of the general reaction to the third point: "Nokia and Symbian now dominate the worldwide smartphone market."
We would like to agree wholeheartedly, but ...
It must be remembered that part of Nokia's success in this area is tied to the fact that all it's higher-end phones use the Symbian OS. This means that anyone who buys one of those phones will be contributing to Nokia's "smart phone" domination. While this is literally true, the fact remains that many of these customers have no intention of buying a smart phone, and therefore will never use the device as it may be used. Empirical evidence of this is not easy to acquire, but anecdotal evidence abounds - the next time you see a non-techie person wielding a Nokia 7610, or even better, a Nokia 3230, ask them how they use their phone.
Indeed, the most useful functionality present in all smart phones is arguably contact/calendar sync, and this is now available in all Nokia mobiles through use of PC Suite. (and has been available in many devices since 2001)
This is generally not the case for, say, Palm One or Microsoft/HP devices. These will have been purchased with specific smart phone usage in mind, because they are more difficult to use, and their form factors, in most cases, represent an unreasonably increase in size / reduction in functionality (e.g no buttons: iMate Jam) and arguably it is only this sort of purchase, rather than purchases simply for superior camera or screen size, which are correctly regarded as smart phone purchases.
An analogous sort of reason is probably also why the mobile web sucks, as Russel Beattie notes. I suggest that in addition to the problems inherent with the multitude of browser configurations, it is also true that the market is simply tiny at the moment. People are not buying phones to surf the web. Think ARPANET before it became the Internet.
In conclusion, Nokia -may- dominate the smartphone market; and it probably does. I bought my smartphone with full knowledge of the alternatives, and I'm sure I'm not alone. The only thing is that Nokia cannot sit complacently with this series of wins under it's belt. It must continue to innovate, and the end result of that must be a smartphone which is not only good looking, and reliable but also user friendly. I hope a user guide will not be necessary for the next Nokia S60 device.
