Symbian, the Biggest Mobile OS No One Talks About

blackbearnh writes "The iPhone vs. Android wars are in full swing, but no one talks about the mobile operating system that most of the world uses: Symbian. Part of the reason, perhaps, is that the Symbian developer infrastructure is so different from the Wild West approach that Apple and Google take. Over at O'Reilly Answers, Paul Beusterien, who is the Head of Developer Tools for the Symbian Foundation, talks about why Symbian gets ignored as a platform despite the huge number of handsets it runs on. Quoting: 'Another dimension is the type of developer community. [Historically, Symbian's type of developers] were working for consulting houses or working at phone operator places or specifically doing consulting jobs for enterprise customers who wanted mobile apps. So there's a set of consulting companies around the world that have specialized in creating apps for Symbian devices. It's a different kind of dynamic than where iPhone has really been successful at attracting just the hobbyist, or the one- or two-person company, or the person who just wants to go onto the web and start developing.'"

Comments

Re:They may not talk about it

[shutdown -p now]

What, iOS can determine the user's ethnicity and refuse services and/or abuse him based on it? How does it do that - facial recognition? Or is the shiny new external antenna a part of that too?

20,000 fart applications?

[Colin Smith]

As a smart phone, yes, it's laughable how few apps are available for it

Apple claim something like 20k applications. Think about that for a second, and then... What exactly could they all possibly be?

So you've got what? 500 different fart applications? Or what? No really. How many different word processors (for example) can survive in a market? MS Word. Open Office, which is free, and then?

Clearly if you want your fart application in a specific shade of brown rather than green, Apple have got you covered. For the slightly less discerning among us, maybe fewer/better apps isn't so bad.
 

Re:Symbian is a goner

[Hognoxious]

All you wrote was "Symbian is a goner. They're moving to QT". How is that not equivalent to "Linux is a goner. They're moving to gnome"?

If you're too thick to include any necessary context then it's no wonder people misunderstand what you have to say (not that it's a great loss), you pompous little prick.