Android? Meh, Says Symbian.
In: Mashable, 2007-11-07, S. 1
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Zugriff:
After Google’s announcement of their Open Mobile initiative and their Android platform, some sort of answer was expected from the biggest competitors. The answer that Symbian’s execs gave can be described in one word: snotty. John Forsyth, the vice president of strategy at Symbian, said quite a lot on the matter, but most of it boils down to Google’s lack of experience and expertise in the mobile OS market. In the end, Forsyth dismissed the Android effort as just another Linux-powered mobile OS initiative. “It’s a bit like the common cold. It keeps coming round and then we go back to business. We don’t participate in these full stop. We make our own platform and we are focused on driving that into the mobile phone market at large ever more aggressively.” - said Forsyth. To me, this reeks of fear. I’m not sure if Sun Tzu applies well to the mobile market, but grossly understimating your opponent is never a good thing. Mr. Forsyth seems to be oblivious to the fact that this time, Symbian is up against the 5th biggest US company with a huge cash reserve, with an alliance of 33 companies (some of them are very big players in the mobile world, like Motorola (NYSE:MEU) (NYSE:MOT) and T-Mobile) on their side. This time, “common cold” might turn into a flu epidemic, and I’m not sure that Symbian has the vaccine. Forsyth also stresses Symbian’s expertise at customer support. “It’s costly, arduous and at times a deeply unsexy job of supporting customers day by day in launching phones. That’s something there’s very little experience of in Google’s environment. If you are a serious phone maker and you are asked to bet your handsets on somebody, you would want to bet on someone with a track record of delivery and support.” - he says. True, Symbian has been around for a long time. Looking at the sheer numbers - 20.4m smartphone software licenses sold in the last quarter of 2007 - things look good. But ask a smartphone owner about Symbian, and chances are you’ll receive an answer that Symbian’s many iterations - S60, UIQ2, UIQ3 and others - are confusing and detrimental to the customer experience, and that official support is lacking. The users aren’t happy, and one only needs to look at the several open letters to Symbian and Sony (NYSE:SNE) Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERICY) which have been posted recently to see this. Until Android lands in the second quarter of 2008, the folks at Symbian can afford to be snotty. But, they might do well to increase their efforts of polishing their mobile platforms in the next 6 months, because there are quite a few users which would be happy to switch to something new - especially if it’s backed by Google. [via] Share This Can't see the video? Click here [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
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Android? Meh, Says Symbian.
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Autor/in / Beteiligte Person: | Schroeder, Stan |
Zeitschrift: | Mashable, 2007-11-07, S. 1 |
Veröffentlichung: | 2007 |
Medientyp: | unknown |
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