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.

[pipatron]

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

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.

In that case...

[OgreChow]

I'm glad there's no cure for the common cold. 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. Any third-party dev is just icing on the cake.

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?

[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?

[BasilBrush]

Mod this down, it's complete bullshit from someone who hasn't a clue. The SDKs for Symbian OS are free downloads, there are plenty of shareware and freeware developers working on it, and you don't need any license to install such apps on a phone.

It will cost to buy a certificate to certify the app as non-malicious and fit for purpose, and without that the user will get a warning when installing that the app is unsigned. But that is a quite reasonable security step given that phone malware could cost serious money on a phone bill. But the lack of such a cert doesn't stop you from using or distributing free apps.

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.

They have to say something like this.

[Britz]

Or should they go: "Oh no, we are going out of business soon!" I suppose investors wouldn't like to hear this.

Symbian was formed and supported out of one single reason: Microsoft
The mobile phone makers, that used to hold a stake in Symbian (Motorola, Nokia and Ericsson each a quarter with Psion having the last quarter IIRC) bought the IP of Epoc from Psion and founded Symbian, because they were scared that Microsoft (with Windows Mobile) would attain the same dominance in the mobile phone market that it held in the PC market.

That danger is over and Symbian ownership has shifted around a bit. Also Microsoft did not yet become such a threat. I suppose that in the mobile phone market there is enough space for everyone. The numbers of units is much higher than in the PC market and it is still growing much faster. Apple just joined it btw. And even if they were to capture only 1% of the world market, they would make a huge profit from the huge amount of sales that this would mean in numbers.

Same with Google.

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

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Did you actually try to develop anything for Symbian?

Well, I did. And let me tell you this: Windows APIs, complete with their haphazard organization and historical baggage, lunatic bugs and arcane undocumented extensions are an example of Reason and Logic, when compared to this positive 10 day old vomit which is Symbian. Any ole Linux API is like an Extatic Symphony of Cosimic Joy, Eternal Purity and All-Encompassing Sanity, next to this 10 day old vomit which is Symbian.

Hell, I am being unfair to 10 day old vomit.

You gotta be a masochist to develop for this thing, downloadable "api" or not.

The toolchain is fucked up beyond belief.

The API is a convoluted mess of overcomplicated certinisms, wheels reinvented to be square and with an offset axis, said square "wheels" within other square "wheels", and all existing only so that Symbian "alliance" can have NDAs, Patents and what not on this shit, which otherwise has been done a million times before, some 900 thousand times of which done much better.

Great majority of it is undocumented or laughably documented (they want you to pay big money for access to the "real" stuff). Most of what is documented you do not want go near.

The OS itself was designed by a brain-damaged monkey, its like a retarded dwarf cousin of Windows, complete with moronic "drive letters" and whole bunch of other truly imbecillic "features" from the early days of DOS, which even Microsoft doesn't want anymore.

You gotta pay money for application certs.

On and and on and on.

Or and did I mention that there is like 6 mutually incompatible versions of the thing in the wild, and about 8 different, mutually incompatible of course, versions of the "ui" deployed on various phones?

One way to gauge of the levels of insanity is the fact that there are a grand total of 4 (to my knowledge) languages ported to this thing, NONE of which has anything resembling something like a useful set of bindings to the Symbian API (Java, which is the only remotely usable one, has a very limited MIDP profile). Ponder that!

In short: do pay good coin for those downloadable Symbian-specific apps if you need them, because their developers have all been through Hell several times to make them.

What really kills me though is how arrogant and pompous the "designer" of this pile of pig manure about this monumental "achievment". Another, mind boggling observation is that there actually cell phone manufacturers using it.

[Citation needed]

[Kaseijin]

It will cost to buy a certificate to certify the app as non-malicious and fit for purpose, and without that the user will get a warning when installing that the app is unsigned. But that is a quite reasonable security step given that phone malware could cost serious money on a phone bill. But the lack of such a cert doesn't stop you from using or distributing free apps. According to Nokia's Symbian OS Platform Security FAQ, applications must be signed to be installed. Self-signed apps have restricted capabilities. Maybe that's just Nokia. Let's keep looking.

Here's a developer discussing forthcoming signing options, which he views as friendlier to developers. All of them are gated. Installation on more than one device requires payment. Some capabilities require payment; some also require permission from the device manufacturer.

More developer discussion. Even "passive content" has to be signed.

Another developer. The current process is "very painful". The new process has "no real plan" for freeware and FOSS.