msmobiles.com/f

[msmobiles.com_robot]

It was 18% last year in Q3, but this year in Q3 it has fallen from 18 % to 16.9 %. The main reason: market share of Symbian increased.

Read more at http://www.msmobiles.com/news.php/5693.html

[gilesjuk]

Guess why?

Better products!

While many of us like Window Mobile (we wouldn't read this site otherwise), the fact is a product is a lot more than just the software.

These days you can't get away with drab dull designs (HTC) with rubbish cameras (HTC) and slow processors (HTC).

Also you have improve every apect of a device, releasing lots of very similar products with minor improvements isn't going to attract attention (HTC again).

Look at the product design of the dumb phones from Samsung, Sony Ericsson for example. Well designed products. Why does a Smartphone have to look ugly and nerdy? why should it have a lousy camera?

Come on people, these are premium products!

[aamp]

It's not the hardware that's the problem when it comes to one handed usage.

It's Windows Mobile.

Apparently WM6 will be better. WM5 is MUCH better than UIQ, WM2003SE etc. and it's much more powerful than the S60 phones but it's definately not 'one handed'.

[leonard]

[quote="aamp"]It's not the hardware that's the problem when it comes to one handed usage.

It's [u]Windows Mobile[/u].

Apparently WM6 will be better. WM5 is MUCH better than UIQ, WM2003SE etc. and it's much more powerful than the S60 phones but it's definately not 'one handed'.[/quote]

I hear people say that S60 isn't very powerful, but what do you mean? In what way is it not as powerful?

It's a front-end to a fully multitasking OS with excellent memory management, designed from the ground up for mobile devices. S60 has a built in Task Manager and it even has a clipboard which is cross application. It hardly ever crashes, is excellently secure and is able to handle all manner of media types out of the box.

Video calling is built in, MMS is built in. The camera is accessed through standard means so it is easy to write software for one device and it will work on another.

In what way is it not as powerful?

In what way is the OS not as powerful?

[aamp]

I have to agree with you gilesjuk.

We're paying high prices for unfinished products. I've got a K-Jam and one of the most annoying things is the keyboard. Trying to enter a phone number is a real task because the number keys are all in the top row.

You have to hold the function key with the left hand and stretch the right hand to hit 1,2,3, etc. Did no-one test the keyboard?? They fixed it with a different design soon afterwards.

I think HTC is getting it's act together (too slowly) and I imagine it's cheaper to use the crappy 200Mhz processor but companies like Samsung and Gigabyte are the ones to watch. I think I'm going to have to go back to Nokia when the N95 is released, after a good 5 years, simply because I expect it to 'just work', even if it doesn't do 'everything'!

Another thing is that we don't mind buying a product that we can update when bugs are fixed and new features are added. But one thing that's happened with WM5 in the last year is that companies have not release the AKU updates to force existing customers to buy the new products.

My KJam isn't even a year old but I doubt iMate will release AKU 3 for it.

XDA-Developers we love you!!!

Maybe WM will catch up in the useability race in a few years or maybe Apple's rumoured smartphone will gain lots of marketshare because it's a company that only reases 'working' products. (I'm not a mac user btw)

Maybe I should get a basic phone and a UMPC or maybe wait for the cPC from DualCor. The search continues.........

[aamp]

RE: leonard and S60

I think it's probably the 'out of the box' scenario. WM gives you Office as standard and the touchscreen gives you more power. Maybe it's a misconception regarding the touchscreen but either way it is quicker to do things with a touchscreen than without.

My only problem it that I also want the ease/power that a touchscreen gives but I also want to do things without the pen when I'm on the run. The phone app is fine but the rest of the system wasn't designed for my thumb - you have to use add-ons to make it work.

To tell you the truth I've not used an S60 for long enough but the lack of TomTom put me off initially and I ended up with a P900 (UIQ) mainly because of the big screen. That was enough to put me off Symbian devices - it really felt 'unfinished'!! Then they went and added the whole security thing where only tested/signed applications would be allowed to run on Symbian v9.

Like I said, the N95 is at the top of the list at the moment. I'll just have to give S60 a go.

Maybe it's the big screen and the 320 * 240 resolution of the N95 plus the Nokia Browser means I can browse the web properly on the move.

[gilesjuk]

[bucci]

[salem]

i think the expansion strategy of microsoft is wrong. The momentum for the future growth is the laymen market, but they don't buy the OS---who care which OS your TV is using? What they care is the brand, and features.

So far PPC actually doesn't have strong consumer brand for laymen. HTC is only a rising star, gigabyte are aggressive to add many new features too, but they're still far from being trusted brands. When we talk of HP / Dell, their brands are not bad, but we think of computers, which are sophisticated to laymen.

Recently I've planned to buy a mobile phone for my mom, and she wanted a large screen model to play a movie. Should it be used by me, I'd choose PPC or Treo models, but i finally spend USD500 to buy a Sony Ericsson phone, because my mom said : "I only need to play a movie and make a phone call." I just couldn't imagine she would spend more than at least a day, usually a month, to learn how to use PPC phone.

To the laymen market, PPC obviously lost a focus. While they have a smartphone that can do almost everything, Sony Ericson or Nokia tried hard to restrain their mobiles to only a very few features, like photo taking, playing movie or MP3 Players. And that exactly matched my mom's needs.