Bye Bye Symbian! Welcome Maemo! It was about time…
Maemo OS
According to a newspaper article in the “Financial Times Germany” Nokia has plans to move from their SymbianOS to an OS called “Maemo” as their standard operating system for cell phones – finally. Maemo is an operating system for the Nokia Internet Tablet line of handheld computers. It was originally named “Internet Tablet OS” and is similar to many handheld operating systems, and features a “Home” screen—the central point from which all applications and settings are accessed. Maemo is based on Debian GNU/Linux and draws much of its GUI, frameworks, and libraries from the Gnome project – so in my opinion it is pretty Android-like but also a good step into the future. Nokia needs something new in their consumer smartphone product palette. There have been rumors that Nokia has planed to release a phone with the Android OS installed, but these rumors have been denied by Nokia with the following words: “There is no truth to this story whatsoever. It is a well known fact that Symbian is our platform of choice for smartphones.” I’m not so sure about that phrase anymore.
This is what I think about that:
Nokia 7650
When the Nokia 7650 was released in 2002 they have really changed the (smart-) phone market. Featuring a built-in camera, an enhanced user interface, and a large 4096 color display, the Nokia 7650 opened up new perspectives in personal communications. And yes, this was the first Symbian Series60 OS, which could be used by nearly everyone (the Nokia Communicator (the brick) was way too big for private use). The other good thing about this OS was the fact, that if you had a Visual C++ license you were able to download the Symbian SDK and to start coding for your device – yes, I developed applications for that first Series60 device. Starting with that device, Nokia has had a huge success and finally bought Symbian in 2008.
Seven years have gone by now and I still do think that neither buying Symbian nor keeping the Symbian OS as their standard platform was a good idea, because the smartphone market had changed rapidly after Apple had released its iPhone. People wanted to have huge touch screen displays, multi-touch features and slim designs – these are all features that apple did not have by that time as they had their focus on MP3 and GPS.
Symbian OS
So they lost market share, while Apple sold more and more iPhones – I have to let you know that I don’t like the iPhone at the moment due to its limited features and its price – but that doesn’t matter right now. Apple also released an SDK with a huge API and also offered an APP Store. Nokia had that as well, but not as comfortable and huge like Apple and with less professional (looking) applications. Let’s compare the market share of the 4th quarter 2008 with the one of the 4th quarter 2007. Nokia lost more than 10% (2007: 50.9% – 2008: 40.8%) while Apple gained more than 5% (2007: 5.2 – 2008: 10.7) – Source: Gartner (March 2009). The winners were Research In Motion with their Blackberry and Apple with their iPhone.
Symbian OS became quite old school. The applications became even more old school as well the design. The only thing that I really love about Symbian is that everything works they way it should – that’s why I still use my Nokia e51. Great cell phone, but old school as well. To get to the people and to gain back their market share they definitely need something new… something that is not old school – something fresh – and therefore a new strategy! Let’s wait and see what Nokia does with the Meamo operating system – I can’t await to play little with it – although I might probably have an Android phone then.
