RSS
Home
iPhone 3GS vs Nokia N97: a device market or an app market?
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Nokia Symbian N97: the iPhone competition is here.
As the Apple WWDC dust settles down, mobile device reviews are blooming but it's unlikely the iPhone will come on top of the list in terms of built-in features. The disappointment is huge especially with video aficionados.
Mobile OS market leader Symbian Foundation developer day across the street of the WWDC in San Francisco hosted its share of Symbian mobile applications developers - as free Nokia phones were prodigally given out last Monday.
Fact often forgotten: Symbian, fully acquired by Nokia last year, has the lion share of the mobile OS market with 36% or 39% share (depending on the source), compared to 10.6% for the next competitor.
Fact: Symbian phones shipment represented 18 million devices in Q1 2009, versus 4 million for "the other phone."
N97 HD Video streaming: I want it !
Mobile phone thought-leader and reviewer Myriam did not hide his preferences: "The Samsung i8910 is the best phone in the world!"
The Samsung Omnia offers exotic features such as embedded mobile navigation, image geotagging, face and smile detection, whatever that means. Both the Nokia and the Samsung offer respectively 5 and 8 megapixel camera with HD video recording.
The latest Nokia N97 has live video streaming. Julien Fourgeaud, Senior Design Engineer at Nokia, narrated how he was video streaming his experience with his N97 while he was paragliding, with life broadcast to his web page and chat with his friends. But isn't that dangerous when you're paragliding?
The iPhone does not even have a built-in flash yet. Even my old 2005 Nokia N70 has got a built-in flash, Mpeg player, Java games, FM radio, Adobe PDF and MS Office documents reader, all built-in. The Nokia N97 has 32GB internal memory, HD 16:9 video recording, Skype VoIP support, assisted GPS and yes, it's unlocked.
Built-in matters not?
But then, does it matter if the iPhone built-in features look outdated in Europe and frankly antiquated in Japan?
Back in the street, Francois said he is going to buy the new iPhone for his wife. But the Nokia or the Samsung are better devices? Francois' reply was as clear-cut as for the thousands of iPhone developers: "yes but it's for the apps!"
Let's compare apps then.
Apple: smart ads, but smart apps?
The latest iPhone marketing campaign was smart enough to pinpoint the main competitive advantage into their next wave of customers: "there is an app for that."
If this is an app market, and you can be sure Apple will continue pushing the debate on this very favorable ground for them, then the iPhone looks like the undisputed champion, with officially 35,000 apps according to Apple's web site. But do we really need a bazillion iPhone News apps? Isn't that taking long-tail a bit too far? More than 1 billion downloads later, less that 5 percent of those who downloaded an iPhone application are actively using it after 21 days and only 10% of apps retain the audience attention, according to a PinchMedia survey.
The average iPhone user seems to behave either as a teen or a teen at heart, and loves having fun with useless and exciting apps thrown away as rapidly as they are downloaded, like a Facebook app. Nokia's target market demographics may be different, more for professionals and professional use.
Nokia: Native and not native
Native or built-in apps are more robust, more reliable, more feature-rich, more deeply connected to the OS and hardware characteristics of the phone, for location or contacts for example. In truth, Nokia made remarkable efforts to help third-party Symbian developers who can now use a web runtime environment as easy to use as a browser.
You have to get Nokia's approval via Nokia Forum before having a native application running on a device, and if you start now it will be for the next model. If you are in a hurry, then ten of thousands of downloadable S60 series applications are available according to SymbianOne. Testing for new devices is not a problem, said Qirfiraz Siddiqui, Symbian developer for 5 years and author of the CellSoul app, you have free remote device access services from Samsung and Nokia.
Is there a mobile device PR segregation in the US?
Symbian app stores existed before the Apple AppStore. However for Symbian apps, the download el dorado has not happened the same way, mainly by lack of awareness of what people can do with the smartphone they bought. "Apple has saved us millions of dollars in advertising smartphones capabilities," Julian said. Will the Nokia users catch up? Or have the Apple marketing campaigns succeeded in making people believe that the iPhone is the only app-friendly smartphone?
For mysterious behing-the-curtain reasons, neither T-Mobile and AT&T, the two US operators that could have subsidized the Nokia N97, has picked it up (yet?). As a consequence, at more than $600 Amazon price, the N97 is unlikely to be a threat to the latest iPhone in the US, unless you are breaking up with AT&T like Om Malik.
Even as I write, most US bloggers compare the Palm Pre to the iPhone 3GS, but not a word on Samsung or Nokia, why? Apart from Myriam's mobile device posts, of course.
Device market or app market
The fight between web-based and mobile-based players has officially started this week. If this is a smartphone device market, the iPhone is four year late. If this is an app awareness market, Nokia is one year late. Who will catch up first? Nokia said they will have more announcements in the next few weeks. To be continued...
Related links:
Video interview of Laura Merling and Maurice Sharp of the Symbian Foundation, a UK-base non-profit organization: Symbian Foundation Developer Day vs Apple WWDC
SF Business Tech Examiner Jeffrey Fritz reviews Pre versus iPhone: is the Palm Pre an iPhone killer?
Poll: Nokia N97 or iPhone 3GS?
Related Articles:
Comments
