If you can't tell by now, I'm a fan of Nokia's Symbian S60.I'm a little bit worried at the moment. It seems as Nokia's flagship operating system is starting to lose steam.
When I first came across S60, it was the Nokia 6620. This was one of my favorite phones. The 6620 had smartphone capability with a user friendly interface. You could also add applications and do quite a few neat things with your phone. It almost reminds me of what we see with the iPhone and Google's Android phones right now. Things have changed rather quickly though...
The only competition back then was Blackberry and Windows Mobile. Blackberry phones were expensive, didn't have multimedia features and were geared exclusively for email and business. Windows Mobile was big, clunky and buggy, and had a high learning curve. S60 was the best choice in my opinion.
S60 never really caught fire in the U.S., mainly because it walked the line between PDA and phone. I worked in the wireless business at the time, and what I saw was most average users thought S60 was too complicated to use. Most business users wanted something that was compatible with their business or something designed with more business features in mind. S60 phones had basically become a niche device, not purely a phone, but not purely a PDA either. I honestly think it was ahead of its time, at least in the U.S. Overseas S60 was booming, becoming the #1 smartphone OS over the years.
As years went by, Windows Mobile and Blackberry took steps to become more media centric and user friendly. They still couldn't pull mainstream users from their regular phones, but they did pull some S60 users from that niche market. S60 continued to stay the same software wise, but Nokia started to do some amazing things with hardware. Mainstreamers in the US were still confused by the UI, and business users still preferred Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Palm eventually jumped into the fray. Partnerships with carriers helped carry a lot of these phones into the mainstream, subsidizing devices to an affordable consumer level. This also helped S60 in the beginning, but took a turn for the worse as years went by.
As years went by, Windows Mobile and Blackberry took steps to become more media centric and user friendly. They still couldn't pull mainstream users from their regular phones, but they did pull some S60 users from that niche market. S60 continued to stay the same software wise, but Nokia started to do some amazing things with hardware. Mainstreamers in the US were still confused by the UI, and business users still preferred Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Palm eventually jumped into the fray. Partnerships with carriers helped carry a lot of these phones into the mainstream, subsidizing devices to an affordable consumer level. This also helped S60 in the beginning, but took a turn for the worse as years went by.
Nokia had partnerships with Cingular, at&t wireless and T-Mobile to produce S60 GSM phones. Unfortunately they didn't create CDMA s60 devices (at least that I am aware of) so Verizon and Sprint were left out. As Cingular and at&t grew and merged and have transformed over the years, so have their demands for "at&t" versions of software stuck on their phones. Bloated with at&t ware such as the media mall, at&t music and other at&t centric software, S60 seemed to work slow and clunky. Mainstreamers now saw the phone as difficult and slow to use. This only hurt Nokia's case.
As time went by, Nokia released the N-Series devices, which were basically multimedia creating powerhouses. Megapixel cameras, quality video, media players and real web surfing were the norm, as well as a slew of applications. So what happened? My theory at this point is this: Nokia knew bloatware hurt their phones, so they fought at&t tooth and nail to keep it intact. at&t wanted their stuff on it, and probably to remove some of the cool features that Nokia uses (so at&t can take advantage of their own paid features). This led to most of the better Nokia devices to be sold unlocked via Nokia for a very high unsubsidized price. Another thing about Mainstreamers, they don't want to pay for a mobile phone. As time went on, Nokia's S60 again turned into a niche product in the U.S., creating high end, hardware powerhouse phones that continued to walk the line between smartphone and mainstream device. Their OS however, saw very little change.
Today with the iPhone OSX, Android, Palm Pre WebOS, Windows Mobile, and now even Maemo; the Smartphone market is getting a little crowded. This is actually a good thing for consumers, creating competition and drive to make smartphones better designed, user friendly and cheaper for everyone. It wasn't until the advent of popular smartphones such as the iPhone, Palm Pre and the G1 that Nokia started noticing their UI had become a little stale.
Today, Nokia's smartphone market in the US is almost nonexistent, and their overseas numbers are decreasing. To use a Football analogy, this is the fourth quarter for S60 and we are about to see if Nokia is going to recover and revamp their stale OS and win the game or give up on S60, or bring in a backup and try to win with Maemo or another OS (Palm WebOS anyone?).
In my opinion Nokia has some time to work on a strategy for Symbian (which I see they have) and decide if they want to be innovative again or just try to keep up. I think Nokia makes hardware second to none, but could use some help with the software.
My suggestion? Partner up with Android and bring me a touch screen N95 (or n86) running Android and a full QWERTY slide instead of a number pad.
That, would ROCK.
