Symbian Blasts Google's Phone Initiative

nowhere.elysium writes "Symbian has suggested that Google is not experienced enough or capable of fully developing a workable mobile platform. Symbian's vice president, John Forsyth inferred that Google's interest in the field will also wane due to it being 'deeply unsexy', and that development is not likely for such a platform because "You have [...] a lot of zeroes in your sales figures before a developer gets out of bed." In the same series of statements, Linux is likened to the common cold: "About every three months this year there has been a mobile Linux initiative of some sort launched. It's a bit like the common cold. It keeps coming round and then we go back to business.""

Comments

First step for symbian.

[raffe]

Hey, take a lesson from Microsoft:
1. First they ignore you (Linux? What is that? Who cares?).
2. They ridicule you (Linux is like cancer. Linux is un-American)
3. Then they fight you. (Our ROI is so much better and we have a roadmap too!)
4. Then you win

It will happen to you to symbian!!

Re:First step for symbian.

[malevolentjelly]

Since when has linux won against Microsoft? Mac hasn't even "won". Linux is just gaining a more substantial fringe market. Even Vista's many failures aren't enough to drop the prior market share- considering they have new product out within 2 years.

I would estimate that linux is more prevalent in the cell phone market than in the desktop market, so you're likely backwards here.

Re:First step for symbian.

[pipatron]

Uhm, the point here being that they have already passed step 1, 2, and is now doing 3.

Re:First step for symbian.

[vadim_t]

Linux is winning, but not in desktop things yet.

There was a story here some time ago about that there are WiFi access points running Linux at Microsoft. The WRT54G access points are very well known even by people who don't know how to use Linux. Linux runs on various other embedded devices as well. Linux is big in the server arena, especially for cheap web hosting and such. Very big operations (Google, Akamai, etc) run massive amounts of Linux boxes.

The desktop will get there eventually. I hear more and more about Ubuntu making excellent progress, and thanks to Linux being open that means that any improvements to one distribution can propagate to other ones as well.

Re:First step for symbian.

[malevolentjelly]

These are different birds. Microsoft is not even a remotely large embedded player- to say that there are linux-based access points is a moot point, since they don't offer a microsoft based wireless router in the mainstream.

Microsoft does desktop, for the most part. In this, they are enjoying comfortable domination based on their success with XP, and have some time to turn around from the failures in Vista.

My point is simply that he's got it backwards- the cell phone market is much more promising for linux than desktop, at this point. Linux will really rely on the death of the classic PC market to enjoy total market "domination"-- or permeation, if you will- Microsoft is more vulnerable to the linux-based device market overtaking PC's than linux taking the PC market- if you're just arbitrarily anti-Microsoft you might like the see the captain go down with his ship, in this case.

Re:First step for symbian.

[vadim_t]

DRM makes new media real to people working in entertainment and production- people who rely on very accurate tracking of views/sales to make their bread. If you are pro linux desktop, you need to be supporting an open DRM option as opposed to no DRM at all- and I mean option. We should encourage open media whenever possible, but allow for DRM in cases where its necessary for
artist/production payment schemes.

No. I don't support DRM, period.

If it uses DRM, I don't buy it or use it. If it even supports DRM (portable music players say), I will specifically look for the device that either supports none or has the least amount of it.

Linux is about choice, right? If you want to see a version of the linux world that is not compatible with the consumer market, look at Stallman and the FSF. The elimination of the market is not a market viable option.

And I should care about the market why exactly? I used Debian for a long time. RMS liked, IIRC. It worked perfectly fine for me.

I don't see how linux operates without company constraints. It is far more constrained in that it is reliant on multiple-company "coalitions" to get any major change done. Apple or Microsoft can simply say "you know, screw our former base" and create a more modern vision for their system in a single generation- they have total platform control with a hierarchy of talent and experience. That's real organization.

Haha. Whoever at MS or Apple says "let's screw our userbase" won't keep their job for very long. MS is well known for maintaining backwards compatibility for a very long time. Apple shipped emulators to compensate for an architecture change. They certainly have broken compatibility, but that's not something that is done easily or often.

I didn't mean precisely that, however. What I mean is that companies have to deal with issues that aren't relevant to many Linux distributions. Including a popup blocker in IE was probably a major decision for MS -- what if our partners get annoyed, or people block ads on MSN? How can we implement this feature in such a way that we can say "See, we have that too", while not creating a conflict with another division? MS also isn't going to let you run Windows on a 32-way box, or have the box be a domain controller without asking for a good deal of extra cash, while Linux distributions need not have any artificial limits like that.

There is life outside of unix, you know.

Tried it. Many times. I used MS-DOS, DR-DOS, PC-DOS, PTS-DOS, OS/2 Warp, Windows 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, ME, 2000, NT 3.51, NT4. I maintained many Windows boxes. I currently prefer Linux to all of that.

I'll eat my words when I see open source solutions that are both A) Not corporate and B) not alternatives.

Many Linux distributions are non-commercial. Debian and Gentoo for example. What do you mean by "not alternatives" though?

Whoops

[Colin Smith]

Pride and all that.

Hmm... A bit of complacency there too.

A lot of /what/, before /who/ gets out of bed?

[ivan256]

Symbian and BREW developers are scarce, not because it's boring or unprofitable to develop for mobile platforms, but because it costs a fortune to get development licenses with the software vendors and distribution licenses with the carriers. If there was a truly open phone, with an SDK that allowed full network and display access, and users could install and run these apps without a carrier distribution aggrements, there would be many more mobile developers.

Nothing like building a big wall around yourself, then complaining that nobody ever comes to visit.

Re:A lot of /what/, before /who/ gets out of bed?

[shirizaki]

Nothing like building a big wall around yourself, then complaining that nobody ever comes to visit.

No, more like "We've built this big wall between us, the carriers, and the consumers to shave the sheep clean, and now all this open and free comes along to ruin it for us!" THAT is the real reason.

Re:A lot of /what/, before /who/ gets out of bed?

[Ford Prefect]

They're not delivering the phones. They won't be supporting phone users directly.

That's what he said - "supporting customers ... in launching phones". Helping customers, the phone manufacturers, launch phones.

"If you are a serious phone maker ... you would want to bet on someone with a track record of delivery and support."

But he does sound a touch envious of the lifestyles of those at Google - describing his own work as "a deeply unsexy job". Aww... ;-)

Re:A lot of /what/, before /who/ gets out of bed?

[hey!]

Well, BREW, whaterver its technical merits or problems, is all about the carriers being the gatekeepers between developers and the users. Once you've paid your SDK and testin fees, you have to sit down and convince a carrier to let you sell your product to their customers. Basically the carriers would prefer anything a customer does with their network to be tied to some fee producing service.

That's why mobile development is in such a bloody mess. Phone vendors do not want phones to become a portable application platform. You can port your phone number when you change carriers, but they'd sure as hell prefer you to lose as much else as possible, for example your phone book and applications, and if possible the phone itself. I expect this is why J2ME is not offered in the same way as J2SE; the phone companies would do their best to kill if it looked like it was emerging as a platform which freed mobile applications from carrier control.

There's nothing really all that special about mobile development. Devices are resource constrained, but in the grand historical sense they aren't all that constrained, when compared to a 286 PC/AT machines from which many an entrepreneur made his fortune. User interfaces are different, but not in a way that a smart designer (who can be hired for a fee) can't take into account. Believe me, I've done it, and while it is easy to make stupid mistakes, it's not really that hard to avoid those mistakes if you have enough money.

And it's not like mobile applications are, in the current state of the art, all that wonderful.

The real problem is overcoming the phone companies. Google is in an interesting strategic position, because they have so much money, they've got huge amounts of mysterious dark fiber, they're making noises about being interested in acquiring spectrum. Maybe they'd have a hard time becoming a mobile phone company, but they could become a mobile something else company and by the way pretty soon that something else does the things you use your phone for now.

Smart people at the mobile companies should be concerned that Google's involvement in mobile technology, if not co-opted, could lead to a paradigm shift. At least in the US, the companies aren't prepared for that kind of competition. They aren't even prepared for fair competition in their existing business. They do their level best to make it hard for consumers to price compare services.

So, Google is in a position that Symbian might well envy. Symbian is a captive of the phone companies. If the phone companies don't want to play with them, there goes their business. If they don't want to play with Google, it has almost no effect on Google's main business, and Google goes back to the lab and cooks up a world of pain for them.

Re:A lot of /what/, before /who/ gets out of bed?

[vhogemann]

I'd like to point out that nerfed phones seems to be a problem only in the USA.

Here at Brazil most operators sell their phones without any features disabled, for an example I can upload any application to my phone using an microSD card, also after one year all operators must unlock your phone for free. I think this happens on other countries too.

So, even if this Google initiative fails at the USA... it can succed at the rest of the world.

PR stories on slashdot = lame

[wattersa]

There are way too many public relations stories on slashdot. Basically you can disregard anything written in a press release or in a news story about what one company said to another. Every time, it is a carefully worded written statement made by the company's PR department or external public relations firm. They often make vague comments that work by implication and innuendo (leaving wiggle room and plausible deniability) rather than commitments to hard facts or positions. Every time someone takes a press release seriously, the company benefits. I for one don't believe slashdot should give top billing to stories like this.

Here, to have a CEO call the mobile field "deeply unsexy" in an attempt to make the public think Google doesn't fit into it implies that he and his company are deeply concerned about Google entering the mobile platform market and shaking it up! As for "You have [...] a lot of zeroes in your sales figures before a developer gets out of bed," he's implying that it will take a long time to be profitable. However, I think Google has "a lot [more] zeroes" in its market capitalization and R&D budget than Symbian and many other companies combined. Thus Symbian's fear that Google will get into mobile devices.

So what? They're not doing it alone.

[The Evil Couch]

FTFA
John Forsyth, vice president of strategy at Symbian, the platform that powers many of the world's phones, said Google lacked experience.

Google has formed an alliance with 33 firms to develop an open platform for mobile phones, called Android.

Among those firms are phone giants HTC, LG, Motorola, and Samsung. Additionally, they're apparently courting Nokia, as well. I don't think that Google's inexperience in designing phones matters one bit. They've allied themselves with virtually every major mobile phone maker in the market. They don't *need* any experience within Google. They have it in spades with their partners.

Cold

[Anonymous Coward]

Once your old and useless it's fairly normal to die from a common cold.

then why is the iphone killing everything?

[k3v0]

If making good phone software is so hard, how come apple can do it so well?

Underestimated, again?

[RayDude]

I guess Symbian will become another in the great long list to underestimate Google.

Its foolhardy to make such assumptions and reckless for an officer of Symbian to make such statements. How can you do anything but take Google seriously at this point?

If google says they are going to do it and they have the skills and the deep pockets needed to do it: so why not plan on it and have product in place to protect your own company from it?

Because its cheaper and easier to bury one's head in the sand than face the fact that you have real competition whose goal is to make money on advertising by giving away an open source OS. They don't even wish to compete in Symbian's turf, they want to make phones for the masses to get more advertising clicks. By executing this strategy they will make Symbian's entire business model obsolete.

So bury your heads Symbian, we'll bury the rest of you later.

Fools.

Why Phones Suck

[Doc Ruby]

So that's why most mobile phones suck: Symbian's attitude is that developers aren't worth bothering with, phones need to be "sexy" more than "good", and Linux is to be dealt with like a virus, not a solution.

I hope Google does to mobile phones what it did to online search, maps and blogging: makes them work by finally providing some competition in the core function without being trapped in its box.

Re:Symbian must have some sand in their Bajingos

[Tony Hoyle]

Because symbian sucks? The comment about developers is rather funny, considering that symbian is downright hostile environment for developers.

Uhh.. what?

The SDK is a free download. How is that hostile?

You can program in standard C or C++. How is that hostile?

Compared to some platforms it's positively open.

Re:Competition.

[Billosaur]

What no screen shots? No docs? Not even a pretty phone to look at? I mean who really cares until they show SOMETHING!

Exactly. Given that it's Google, there isn't even a beta to look at... But this is Google at its finest -- stirring up a hornet's nest, dropping hints and outright misdirections, then rolling out there own thing like they're surprised anyone had ever heard of it or knew it was coming. It certainly generates buzz.

Whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not a google lover but come on. Yahoo said, google can't compete, MSN said yahoo can't compete. Blah blah blah.
If sym doesn't get over itself, they will be next Netscape. Sitting in the garage wondering what happened and talking
about how they can throw a football over that mountain....

Bingo! Monocultures will dominate.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this guy just completely missing the fact that some of the brightest young developers in the world work for Google? They don't need external developers in order to be a success.

Bingo!

MS dominates the world, due in no small part, that they are a monoculture and tightly control the platform while 3rd party developers make the apps, but still have to do things the MS way or their apps won't work very well.

Google will also be a giant juggernaut monoculture, stealing vast chunks of marketshare from MS... with the big difference being that they'll be based upon an open platform, but will tightly control the development end of things instead.

Re:In that case...

[Anonymous Coward]

Careful there... while some of the brightest developers work at Google, Google seriously lacks good product managers capable of seeing a product through. Google's few non-search and ad apps are still only niche players (even gmail doesn't have the market share it could have outside the geek world). Google's model of letting geeks have fun is great as long as the money is free (which it is, thanks to their ad engine), but as soon as the apps need to start producing revenue to justify their existence, Google will struggle.

I think this is what Sybian is trying to point out. Google may have a good idea and a motivated geek force behind it. But, it takes more than just motivated geeks to ensure longevity in the marketplace.

Symbian is right, because of customer service

[mveloso]

The Symbian VP is right: google's android platform will fail.

Why?

Because quite simply, google sucks at customer service. And the OS business is all about customer service.

How do I know that google's customer service sucks? Simple: I've used them for things other than search. Have you ever tried to get a detailed sales report out of google checkout? You can't. You can ask about it, but it disappears into the void that is google checkout's customer service. Can they tell you if they're ever going to have reporting? Nope.

What does the sales report include? Dates, amounts, and state. What about customer names and addresses? Nope. What about anything else? Sorry.

Google's service philosophy is "help yourself." That doesn't help when you need features of a product that don't exist.

If google can't give you a useful sales report for the last month, how can they support a mobile phone launch?

The answer, of course, is they can't. Unless it's advertising-related, google can't concentrate for long enough to make a mature product...or they're too arrogant to listen. gmail still doesn't have folders, which is totally different than keywords (which is their 'justification'). Yeah, whatever.

Re:Symbian is right, because of customer service

[hyades1]

Yeah, that's just what I want...Google giving up my name and address to some prick so they can spam me in my own house. If I give Google my personal info for ANY reason, I expect them to keep in under lock and key, not make it part of a "detailed sales report".

Basically, if I didn't give you that information myself or direct Google to let you have it, you aren't entitled to it and you can fuck off.

Re:Symbian C++ experience

[Hal_Porter]

Yup, Symbian C++ Api really, really sucks. It's actually a good deal nastier than MFC and I didn't think that was possible.

http://www.symbiantutorial.org/symbian-tutorial/?3._Symbian_Fundamentals:3.1_Console_Application

A console application can be as simple as this (file hello.cpp):

#include "main.h"
LOCAL_C void mainL(CConsoleBase* con) {
_LIT(KTxtHello, "Hello.\n");
con->Printf(KTxtHello);
}

Well, really, I am cheating! There are some complex details, but these are hidden in the "main.h". This is a variation of an example named "CommonFramework.h" that you can find in SOME versions of the sdk (for example in the SDK 6.1). The header follows the VERY BAD practice of including CODE in the header file. CommonFramework.h does so, but unfortunately, since LOCAL_C imply static, you have to write all the code needed to start the application in the same file... or include code! Since I like to reuse main.h, I choose to do the same (but I am not proud of it). The code of "main.h" is shown in detail AT THE end of this chapter, since you cannot understand it without having knowledge of some characteristics of Symbian, which we have to explore in the course of the chapter.

Hmm, let's look at main.h
http://www.symbiantutorial.org/symbian-tutorial/?3._Symbian_Fundamentals:Starting_a_Console_application

#ifndef MAIN_H
#define MAIN_H
#include <e32base.h>
#include <e32cons.h>
LOCAL_C void mainL(CConsoleBase* con);
// literals
_LIT(KTxtTITLE,"Console App");
_LIT(KTxtOK,"ok");
_LIT(KTxtPressAnyKey," [press any key]");
_LIT(KFormatFailed,"failed: leave code=%d");
// declarations
LOCAL_C void initConsoleL();
// main function called by E32
GLDEF_C TInt E32Main() {
// mark the head start
__UHEAP_MARK;
// create the obligatory cleanup stack
CTrapCleanup* cleanup=CTrapCleanup::New();
// execute the init console function, trapped
TRAPD(error,initConsoleL());
// no error or panic
__ASSERT_ALWAYS(!error,User::Panic(KTxtTITLE,error));
// clean the cleanup stack
delete cleanup;
// mark the end
__UHEAP_MARKEND;
return 0;
}
// Initialize Console
LOCAL_C void initConsoleL() {
// create a full screen console object
CConsoleBase* console = Console::NewL(KTxtTITLE, TSize(KConsFullScreen,KConsFullScreen));
CleanupStack::PushL(console);
// execute main application
TRAPD(error,mainL(console));
if (error)
console->Printf(KFormatFailed, error);
else
console->Printf(KTxtOK);
// press a key and wait
console->Printf(KTxtPressAnyKey);
console->Getch();
// cleanup and return
CleanupStack::PopAndDestroy(); // close console
}
#endif

To build a console application you have to write the E32Main function, since this is the required name for the entry point of an exe. Such a function has to initialize the Cleanup Stack then initialize the console. Since the initialization can generate an exception, you have to move all of it to a separate function, than can be trapped. A few random notes. The function is a Global C function, and this must be explicitly declared. Marks are required to surround the cleanup stack declaration. After initializing the console, we call the real function that does your job (here it is named mainL), then wait

Re:In that case...

[Anonymous Coward]

brightest young developers? Right ... what exactly has Google produced themselves that has any innovative value? I truly can't think of anything. Sure, their search was nice, but after that? Video? They bought youtube. Pics? They bought picassa. Gmail? Can't work with it ... seriously, google hasn't developed _anything_ new for a long time. Correct me if I'm wrong.

"Deeply Unsexy"

[ukemike]

The Symbian guy calls mobile applications development "deeply unsexy" and by association calls Symbian unsexy. I think that this sums up Symbian's problems perfectly. Nearly ALL cell phone UIs are awful and unsexy. I want my cell to be easy to use and Sexy! You go google!

Google

[ItchyBob]

I'm going to leave the Symbian bashing to one side and try to talk about google. They have a great search engine, full marks. But they won that market because no one else cared about search at the time. No one else was trying to make a better search engine, the competition was poor. But they still went in and did it, spotted the market and did a bloody good job. But they are entering a whole new arena here. This is a different ballgame. They can't just release a load of beta code to a handset manufacturer and see how they get on with it. It's true, they dont do customer support, but thats not difficult to change. But thats the point - they will have to change. The way google work will not work in this industry. Thats what Symbian are trying to say in quite an arragont manner, admitedly. Can they adapt the way they work? Well, most likely. They have the money, they have the drive and they have the people. They will probably give it a good go, but it wont happen overnight.