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Here in Europe, in some countries, cell phone companies offer a service that can reveal a phone's location (with the precision of a fraction of a kilometer/mile) at any given time from any place actually ... Any tracking (except maybe for aid in criminal investigations?) without the owner's consent would be very illegal.

Very definitely this is used in criminal investigations. In the case of the Soham murders back in 2002, one of the victims had a phone which the murderer had turned off. In a public appeal the police said they'd sent a message to the phone, trying to trick the murderer into turning the phone on (which would reveal its location).

In fact this trick didn't work, but mobile phone location data was still crucial. Police plotted all the walking routes around where the phone was last located just before it was switched off, and from this found the suspect (later, murderer's) house and also disproved his alibi.

Rich.

according to information from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Iphone_sales.svg
and
http://www.mobilemonday.net/news/global-mobile-phone-sales-down-3-8-percent-in-q1

the iphone works out at less than 3% of mobile phone sales for 1Q 2008. Not bad for a newcomer but nothing compared to the big players like nokia.

Nokia is the worlds't largest mobile phone maker, and the largest smartphone maker. Quotes: Nokia has maintained its leadership position with a 56.4% share of the 70.9 million units shipped in 2006. , Nokia itself enjoys 44.5% of the smartphone market and Nokia market share breaks 40 per cent threshold . HTC is very small, they are so small that they are not even cited in global market share reports.

1. I partially agree, the user interface of in example S60 has been buggy sometimes and it has a lot to do in the area of user friendliness, but it's not that hard to use and the newest versions like S60 v3 work much better. It should be noted however that S60 is perhaps the best smartphone platform there is now, it's quite reliable and it's quite user friendly when compared to competitors, so it's quite hard to believe that something that is still in the development could excel it or be even in level with it.

2. Development community around Symbian is huge. It includes big publicly traded companies to amateur developers. So it's not some people, it's a huge number of peoples. And hey, it's not Java, it's Dalvik, they use Java as a language, but what good is it if you don't have all the libraries. To me Dalvik is just a bastardization of Java. They could have opted for normal J2ME with extensions, but now they are in a state of limbo with it. So what does that mean? Well, you can't just pick and use J2ME if you don't first compile to Dalvik, huge set back! Huge!

3. Branding branding branding... You think that Google lets all those small mobile phone makers to use their brand? No change. When the consumer goes for shopping he/she knows few makers namely: Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung and Motorola. Any device maker that wants to become recognised has to spend fortunes to marketing. And even if they had a brand name, people want phones that work and are good, just look at Windows Mobile, utter failure even they have the magic power of Windows.

4. No. If you buy your phone from the telecom operator as a part of a packet, it will be locked and probably crippled to a halt. It doesn't matter if it has Linux, all that the telecom operators have to say to manufacturers is: "Make it live Tivo so that nobody than we can change it.". You will get openness only when you buy your phone SIM -free.

5. What unnecessary tie ups?

6. No. In telecom business it's normal to be a member in almost every industry initiative, the things is that not all players join with full steam on, and from those who do, only few remain that way. When we start seeing Android devices and see what their impact in the market is we can start to look on is the alliance working or not, before that, it's just a one industry alliance sprouting paper and promises.

Funny, nothing about Nokia counter suing Qualcomm on their PR site http://www.mobilemonday.net/news/nokia-counter-sue s-qualcomm-in-wisconsin

Nokia has also been doing a pilot in the town of Oulu in Finland, using Nokia 6136 phones. From the article "The pilot project is a joint cooperation between Nokia, the DNA/Finnet group and the City of Oulu".

The parts of Metrowerks related to Symbian were also bought up by Nokia, and rolled into their business. Nokia owns the Symbian specific IP, and hired the Symbian related talent, but still licenses tools technology from Metrowerks proper.