Remember this one? Thanks to Steve Lichfield for the photo.

Andrew Orlowski over at The Register has written a monumental series on the history and background to Psion. It really is compelling reading for anyone even slightly curious about the heritage of Symbian and developmental stages of Psion.

In today’s fast-paced smartphone world, it is rather useful to take a bit of time out to remember how we got here. It was Psion that started it all. And if you sometimes wonder about the rather passionate Symbian users convinced that the operating system’s heritage was second to none — well, they’re right. It was. It arguably still is. I’d love to have seen what they could have done with the right resources. It’s a different world now though.

So if you’ve a bit of time, get a coffee and have a read. Or bookmark it for later on.

I also hope that The Register consider releasing Andrew’s piece as a short story on Amazon (like what Ars Technica did with their OS X Lion review).

Super work Andrew.

Accenture gains a huge, huge foothold in mobile and a massive revenue stream.

Interesting times. It’s good to see big moves such as this.

Espoo, Finland and New York, US – Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Accenture (NYSE: ACN) today announced plans for a strategic collaboration in which Nokia would outsource its Symbian software activities and transition about 3,000 employees to Accenture. At the same time, Accenture would provide mobility software services to Nokia for future smartphones.

The collaboration, which is subject to final agreement, calls for Accenture to provide Symbian-based software development and support services, with the expected transition of about 3,000 Nokia employees to Accenture. The companies expect completion of the final agreement during summer 2011, and expect the transition of employees by the end of the calendar year 2011. Transitioning employees, located in China, Finland, India, United Kingdom and the United States, will initially work on Symbian software activities for Nokia. Over time, Accenture and Nokia will seek opportunities to retrain and redeploy transitioned employees.

This collaboration also includes plans for Accenture to provide mobility software, business and operational services around the Windows Phone platform to Nokia and other ecosystem participants. Under the proposed agreement, Accenture would become a preferred partner for Nokia’s smartphone development activities, as well as a preferred provider of services.

“Mobility is a key area for Accenture,” said Marty Cole, chief executive, Accenture Communications and High Tech group. “This collaboration with Nokia will enhance our ability to help clients across multiple industries leverage mobility to advance their business agendas. It is a real win-win for Accenture and Nokia”.

“This collaboration demonstrates our ongoing commitment to enhance our Symbian offering and serve our smartphone customers,” said Jo Harlow, executive vice president for Smart Devices, Nokia. “As we move our primary smartphone platform to Windows Phone, this transition of skilled talent to Accenture shows our commitment to provide our Symbian employees with potential new career opportunities.”

Accenture and Nokia have been working together since 1994. In October 2009, Accenture acquired Nokia’s professional services unit that provides engineering and support of the Symbian operating system to mobile device manufacturers and service providers, and which then served as a key building block in Accenture’s Mobility services portfolio.

About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 215,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments.  The company generated net revenues of USD21.6 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2010. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

Accenture is focused on enabling its clients to achieve breakthrough growth throughout the rapidly changing mobile ecosystem. The Accenture Mobility Services group offers five mobility services including consulting, software services–applications, software services–devices and platforms, managed services, and business integration services. These are designed to help organizations embrace business to employee (B2E), business to consumer (B2C), business to business (B2B) and machine to machine (M2M) business opportunities. Accenture offers mobility and embedded software services across a wide range of industries and platforms, including Symbian, WinMo (Microsoft Windows® Mobile), Windows Phone, Android(TM), Blackberry®, iPhone®, Java(TM), Linux, Meego(TM).

About Nokia
Nokia is committed to connecting people to what matters to them by combining advanced mobile technology with personalized services. More than 1.3 billion people connect to one another with a Nokia, from our most affordable voice-optimized mobile phones to advanced Internet-connected smartphones sold in virtually every market in the world. Through Ovi (www.ovi.com), people also enjoy access to maps and navigation on mobile, a rapidly expanding applications store, a growing catalog of digital music, free email and more. Nokia’s NAVTEQ is a leader in comprehensive digital mapping and navigation services, and Nokia Siemens Networks is one of the leading providers of telecommunications infrastructure hardware, software and professional services globally.

Espoo, Finland and Redmond, US – Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) today announced the signing of a definitive agreement on a partnership that will result in a new global mobile ecosystem, utilizing the very complementary assets of both companies. Completed ahead of schedule, the definitive agreement is consistent with the joint announcement made on February 11.

In addition to agreeing to the terms of their partnership, including joint contributions to the development of the new ecosystem, Nokia and Microsoft also announced significant progress on the development of the first Nokia products incorporating Windows Phone. With hundreds of personnel already engaged on joint engineering efforts, the companies are collaborating on a portfolio of new Nokia devices. Nokia has also started porting key applications and services to operate on Windows Phone and joint outreach has begun to third party application developers.

“At the highest level, we have entered into a win-win partnership,” said Stephen Elop, President and CEO of Nokia Corporation. “It is the complementary nature of our assets, and the overall competitiveness of that combined offering, that is the foundation of our relationship.”

“Our agreement is good for the industry,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. “Together, Nokia and Microsoft will innovate with greater speed, and provide enhanced opportunities for consumers and our partners to share in the success of our ecosystem.”

The relationship is structured around four broad areas:

1. A combination of complementary assets, which make the partnership truly unique, including:

- Nokia to deliver mapping, navigation, and certain location-based services to the Windows Phone ecosystem. Nokia will build innovation on top of the Windows Phone platform in areas such as imaging, while contributing expertise on hardware design and language support, and helping to drive the development of the Windows Phone platform. Microsoft will provide Bing search services across the Nokia device portfolio as well as contributing strength in productivity, advertising, gaming, social media and a variety of other services. The combination of navigation with advertising and search will enable better monetization of Nokia’s navigation assets and completely new forms of advertising revenue.
- Joint developer outreach and application sourcing, to support the creation of new local and global applications, including making Windows Phone developer registration free for all Nokia developers.
- Opening a new Nokia-branded global application store that leverages the Windows Marketplace infrastructure. Developers will be able to publish and distribute applications through a single developer portal to hundreds of millions of consumers that use Windows Phone, Symbian and Series 40 devices.
- Contribution of Nokia’s expertise in operator billing to ensure participants in the Windows Phone ecosystem can take advantage of Nokia’s billing agreements with 112 operators in 36 markets.

2. Microsoft will receive a running royalty from Nokia for the Windows Phone platform, starting when the first Nokia products incorporating Windows Phone ship. The royalty payments are competitive and reflect the large volumes that Nokia expects to ship, as well as a variety of other considerations related to engineering work to which both companies are committed. Microsoft delivering the Windows Phone platform to Nokia will enable Nokia to significantly reduce operating expenses.

3. In recognition of the unique nature of Nokia’s agreement with Microsoft and the contributions that Nokia is providing, Nokia will receive payments measured in the billions of dollars.

4. An agreement that recognizes the value of intellectual property and puts in place mechanisms for exchanging rights to intellectual property. Nokia will receive substantial payments under the agreement.

With the definitive agreement now signed, both companies will begin engaging with operators, developers and other partners to help the industry understand the benefits of joining the new ecosystem. At the same time, work will continue on developing Nokia products on the Windows Phone platform, with the aim of securing volume device shipments in 2012. The scale of both companies’ mutual commitment is significant and is in keeping with the intention to build a new ecosystem based on this long-term, strategic partnership.

The last paragraph is probably the most important segment of the announcement in the context of the industry. It’s been long rumoured that operator groups have been utterly delighted at the prospect of a Nokia-Microsoft alliance and if these operators get behind the concept, they could really change the marketplace. It’s far too easy to forget that in most markets — especially the Western ones — the mobile operator plays a critical role in the adoption of new handsets through their subsidy decisions.

If we get operator groups committing to, for example, 10 million and 20 million chunks of handsets, that’s really going to change the market dynamic. Bring it on!

I’ve been banging the drum for the platform. Although I’m sure a few folk at Nokia don’t quite believe it. I remember back in 2009 — or was it 2010? — I gave a presentation to the TechCrunch Europe GeeknRolla event making it clear that Ovi would go places — that download figures would increase, that developers would start to make money from it.

I’m pleased to have been right!

In recent times I’ve been enjoying getting the milestone releases. The next one is just in today. The headline figure? 5 million downloads a day, 40,000 applications in the store — and more than 158 developers have done 1 million+ downloads already.

It’s working!

Here’s the full release. Have a look at some of the statistics (I’ve bolded some points I think are key).

- – - – -

Nokia’s Ovi Store hits 5 million downloads per day as users enjoy new Symbian devices and apps

- Up to 5 million downloads per day

- More than 40 000 apps represents nearly eight-fold growth in one year

- 158 developers pass 1 million downloads each

Espoo, Finland – Nokia today announced that its Ovi Store has grown by nearly eight times over the last year and now reaches up to 5 million downloads per day, propelled by the latest Symbian devices – the Nokia N8, Nokia C6-01, Nokia C7 and Nokia E7 – which account for about 15 percent of the daily downloads.

Now then, I used the word ‘excitement‘ in the title with a straight face. I don’t think it’s blow-the-doors-off excitement per se — but there’s definitely genuine interest out there in the marketplace to see what’s new from Nokia. These two devices look pretty hot. I mean that in a genuine manner. I do like the look of the E6. I still have a small longing in the back of my consciousness for my old Nokia E61 running Good Mobile Messaging. What a joy that was, back in the day. The E6 looks like a much sexier revision.

The X7? Personally, I don’t think that’s my kind of phone — I just really, really like the QWERTY keyboard experience, however the styling is sure to catch a lot of Symbian hearts. That, and the 8 megapixel camera.

Both devices are running the all new Symbian Anna version. Again, this is good news. If I was to summarise, I’d say it’s quite-a-bit-nicer.

Indeed, this is the kind of revision that we needed to see about 1.5 years ago.

But how things have changed for Nokia — in a good way. These devices — genuinely nice additions to the Symbian range — would have been absolutely panned just 60 days ago. But the Nokia-Microsoft move has — finally — brought a lot of more patience (or should that be, tolerance?) into the marketplace where Nokia’s Symbian devices are concerned. What’s rather interesting is even a lot of the iMedia (the tech media that’s been roundly against Nokia and Symbian for years) is paying attention properly. I’ve had numerous enquiries from the West Coast about these devices and the new Anna version of Symbian from a whole range of publications who’d normally be sure to base themselves a billion miles away from anything to do with Nokia. This can only be good news for Nokia.

I look forward to getting hands-on with the devices at some point soon. Meanwhile, check out Mr Blandford’s array of E6 and X7 (and Symbian Anna) content.

And visit the E6/X7 intro site here: http://events.nokia.com/discover-symbian/

It’s good to see the company getting attention beyond the usual ‘Nokia is doomed’ line.

Indeed I’d go so far as to say that in recent weeks, Nokia has never had so much Western media attention that didn’t involve a serious amount of kicking.

There is quite a bit of excitement around the marketplace.

And you know what, it’s so refreshing.

It’s refreshing because we’re seeing traditionally iOS/Android dedicated publications like Forbes giving Nokia the time of day, recognising that should the company play ball as per expectations (Windows, Android, some sort of deal), then Nokia will become a very big fish indeed.

It’s already a big fish. Just, not in the way the media wants it to be.

Here’s what Forbes had to say:

Nokia (NOK) and Microsoft (MSFT) simply need to do a deal. The logic is obvious. Nokia has large but eroding handset market share, and increasingly dated software. Microsoft has spiffy new handset software, but hardware partners who seem smitten with Android. The companies need each other.

That, at least, is the way many on the Street see the situation.

via Dear Nokia And Microsoft: Please Do A Deal, Love, Investors – Eric Savitz – Tech Musings – Forbes.

Now.

The ultra negative bit here is that if Nokia does not impress next Friday at Capital Markets day. Or possibly through MWC, that’s it. It’s game-over. It’ll be time for the Western media to deploy words like ‘confused’, ‘beleaguered’, ‘struggling’ and so on.

Nokia’s status has already been set to ALSO-RAN/IRRELEVANT. The media is going to absolutely nuts if Nokia doesn’t ‘make good’ on some kind of additional platform announcement beyond MeeGo and Symbian shortly.

Bring on the fireworks.

Moody’s Investors Services is considering Nokia Corp. for a possible downgrade as the Finland-based cell phone maker steadily loses market share to Apple Inc. and other companies.

Although Nokia is the world’s top cell phone maker, with particularly strong brand recognition outside the U.S., it has struggled to compete against the likes of Apple, HTC Corp., Research In Motion Ltd. and Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. in the growing smartphone category. Apple’s iPhone is the world’s best-selling smartphone.

“The rating review was caused by the gradual but steady weakening of Nokia’s business profile and competitive position in mobile phones which has started to pressure profitability,” Moody’s said in a statement Friday.

via Moody’s considers lowering Nokia’s rating: Associated Press Business News – MSN Money.

For everyone who keeps thinking I’m absolutely nuts when I talk about Nokia’s failure to manage perception in North America (and Silicon Valley in particular), here’s where it gets really interesting.

I thought Nokia posted reasonably healthy results — especially in the context of the whole year. The company’s handsets are continuing to sell like hotcakes in many markets. Hotcakes, I tell you.

But, not in the market that matters for media. Not in the States… this is where reputation is key. I’m always surprised when I meet fund managers or influential analysts and find them completely sold on and Apple-and-Android future, incapable of parsing the words ‘Nokia’, ‘half a billion handsets a year’ and ‘successful’ into the same reality.

For a long time now I’ve been remarking on Nokia’s complete lack of focus on the American marketplace. I get the fact that the company has been focusing — sensibly — on the emerging markets. That they’ve established a phenomenal base amongst the feature phone world. I understand that America is quite a small market comparatively speaking. The failure at the high end, the failure to better — or at least equal — the likes of HTC/Samsung/Apple’s lead devices (in the eyes of the mainstream media) is now taking a toll. Instead of hot air from the media citing Nokia’s demise, it’s the turn of the ratings agencies.

A shot across the bows from Moody’s? Goodness me.

Interesting, isn’t it, that Moody’s are just mulling the downgrade. That there’s nothing specific they can point to beyond the phrase ‘gradual, steady weakening‘.

This is the kind of news, however, that Nokia’s Board of Directors will have to closely evaluate.

You need these ratings agencies on side. You need the analysts and media too. That’s because, at some point, the prophecies of doom become self-fulfilling when they’re being repeated over and over again.

If you’d like another example, check out John Dvorak’s ‘second opinion’ column at MarketWatch. It will make shocking reading for many diehard Nokia fans:

Here’s the deal: There has been a reboot in the phone business, and the app-oriented smartphone (what I like to call an app phone) is the new, plain-old phone. The market is not looking for a bunch of competitive smartphones; it wants an app phone with a reasonable selection of free applications that people can download as they see fit.

This means iPhone or Android. The battle is over.

John then goes on to outline how Nokia will — in his mind — announce both Windows Phone 7 and Android support shortly. And that WP7 will probably go the way of the Dodo.

It appears there is no question in John’s mind that Nokia will announce at least Android support. No question at all. John’s way past that decision and is busy evaluating what would happen if the company played the Windows game too (given Elop’s heritage).

So make no mistake: In the coming weeks, if Nokia doesn’t announce Android/WP7 or something flipping amazing, the marketplace is going to tear the company to shreds. Moody’s have already signalled their position.

These are serious people weighing in. This is not the time to argue. It’s not the time to tell the market it’s wrong, to try and explain Nokia’s continued strategy. If anything, it’s time for some grand announcements.

I’m tempted to suggest that Nokia should knock out a few Android devices for the fun of it. To keep the market on side. To shut the media-up. They should really, really invest a good bit of time and attention delivering a phenomenally good Nokia Android phone. Something at the 700 Euro/800 dollar mark that really, REALLY puts the iPhone and HTC’s finest to shame. 20 megapixel camera, 24-hour battery, super-HD-something-or-other, running Android 3.0, with the Ovi Store front-and-centre serving Android apps. I’d do it just to shut the market up.

I’m looking to Nokia for the next generation. I’m not convinced MeeGo is necessarily it. Indeed if MeeGo is announced to the planet looking anywhere near some of the leaked screenshots we’ve seen, the Moody’s team will have their scissors out before Mr Elop can finish his keynote. I do think Nokia can deliver at the top end. I think they could introduce a higher-plane, beyond the point-and-click app world of iPhone and Android. They’re entirely capable.

Right now I reckon it’s time to give the market what it wants. Do that and carry on innovating strongly with MeeGo, Symbian and the next generation.

What do you think? I still speak to many highly informed Nokia watchers who tell me that Nokia and Android is simply ridiculous. About as ridiculous as a Moody’s downgrade warning.

It’s what Moody’s believe though. It’s what they perceive. And perception is 9/10ths of the law.

One thing is for sure, the next few weeks (including Mobile World Congress) are going to be some phenomenally exciting ones in the industry.

Just got this in from Symbian‘s PR: CEO Lee Williams will leave the Symbian Foundation with immediate effect.

The Foundation’s HR Director, Steve Warner reports:

“The Symbian Foundation is today announcing that Lee M. Williams has stepped down from his position as Executive Director for personal reasons. We thank Lee for his work over the past two years and wish him all the best in his future ventures.”

“The Board of Directors has appointed Tim Holbrow, formerly the Symbian Foundation’s CFO, to the position of Executive Director with immediate effect. We congratulate Tim and welcome him to his new role.”

Update: Ben over at The Really Mobile Project had this to say: Rumour: Symbian Foundation to be wound up?

I’m looking forward to seeing what Nokia delivers to the marketplace today. I’m excited at the possibilities.

However I still retain a sad-reality-view.

Today, Nokia needs to deliver unmitigated brilliance.

It’s a binary situation. Either it’s brilliant or it’s not. It’s that simple.

I am quietly fearful that the company will vomit out a range of almost-nice devices, especially given that — as Martin Bryant at The Next Web tweets just now — today is ‘Symbian Day’.

Just last night I was talking with one of Symbian’s key employees.

“What are you hoping for?” I asked the chap, referring to NokiaWorld today.

“Continued existence,” he said.

Straight face. He wasn’t joking.

Today, I don’t want to see another S40 device with a slightly better this or a slightly enhanced that.  I don’t want to see yet-another-6700 slightly modified device.

And I don’t want them to reveal the Nokia N8. It’s done. It’s out there already.  By all means announce that it’s shipping today, or do an Oprah ‘look under your seat’ moment for the attending delegates.

But please don’t shovel us any more shit please Nokia.

You can follow all the joy at http://events.nokia.com/nokiaworld.

And the All About Symbian team will be live blogging every pico-second of the event over at All About Symbian right here.

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The Outstanding Contribution Award: Andrew Tsu of Synaptics (this is the chap who developed the modern capacitive touchscreen!)

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Best Consumer Experience: FindaProperty (for their iPhone app)

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Best Ad Campaign: Fancharge:

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Thanks go to The Symbian Foundation for supporting the production of videos from the event. Thank you Symbian, you rock!

The Symbian Wild Ducks project is all about making a phone using the Symbian 3 platform and off-the-shelf components. The Wild Ducks team are busy working away on this. You can actually pop by and talk to them about it — and see how far they’ve got — every Tuesday and Thursday after 6pm at Symbian’s London HQ.

Check out the details. There’s free pizza too!

It seems like we’ve been waiting decades for Nokia to release their next N-Series device. Long rumoured, the N8 has finally arrived.

Well, it’s finally been announced. It actually arrives in Q3 this year, so it’s a good 4-6 months away still.

But it’s a looker and it boasts a specifications page about 8 screens long on my browser.

At an expected retail price of around €370 / £320 / $494, it’s going to fit beautifully into the mobile operator stack, free for contract subscribers (I estimate) at somewhere around £30-35 per month.

Notable features include the 12 megapixel camera that will capture 720p H.264 video at 30 frames per second. Plus there’s Nokia’s famed Xenon flash, 16GB memory on-board with support for a further 32GB via memory card.

Qt support has arrived with the N8, too. I have been banging on about Qt for quite a while now and it’s something that mobile developers focus upon closely. You’ll be able to write apps using the Qt developer environment that will run beautifully on the N8. Check out qt.nokia.com for more information and to download the IDE.

The third edition of Symbian (“Symbian ^3 for Nokia”) also makes an appearance so it’s going to be interesting to see how that functions on the device. Indeed, the whole N8 experience is something that deserves further investigation. The zippy, flashy, gorgeous promo videos may well do the handset justice. But we have been there before though, haven’t we?

I’m excited to see how the N8 performs. It’s shaping up to be one of the company’s top handsets, the specifications are fantastic, the Ovi Store is integrated as are the now-familiar Ovi suite of services (including unrestricted Ovi Maps navigation and voice directions).

The device looks promising. I think the N8 experience may well surprise and delight. Will it be enough to persuade customers to turn away from a similarly priced iPhone or Android device? We shall see. There’s a lot of love in the room for Nokia.

Find out more and check out the whizzy videos here: http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/devices/nokia-n8

The Symbian chaps in London regularly hold get-togethers all across the world. It’s a super way of connecting with Symbian’s team and asking them for input, perspective or assistance — and it’s also a good opportunity to contribute your ideas — and what’s more, if it’s a really good idea, you could conceivably see it included in the next build.

The next Stammtisch is at 5pm on April 12th at The Stage Door pub, 28-30 Webber Street, London, SE1 8QA. The topic is a pretty good one: “Making our platform information a competitive advantage for Symbian” and has the follow up questions:

Symbian should lead the field when it comes to platform information. How do we get there? What information do we lack? Who is the audience?

I’ve got a lot of views on the subject! I’m sure you do too. If you’d like to express them to the horse’s mouth directly, then now’s the time. Pop by and say hi to the chaps. Tell them I sent you!

You can get the full Stammtisch details here.

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Here’s the video…

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Let’s see what’s on his mind!

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So how did Annsi handle that question?

He got stuck right in. He wasn’t sitting back and trying to remember the talking points, no. I witnessed a chap who sincerely believes (and, has most probably seen) in his vision for the future. It makes really, really interesting viewing — especially his assertion that the generic mobile interface for consuming ‘media’ will be a map.

I really was impressed that this ‘grey-haired’ executive could talk-the-talk. I really hope that he continues to galvanise the team at Nokia (and, to a lesser extent, the Symbian and MeeGo teams) to deliver the vision he described in this video.

I don’t think Anssi was being creative when, in Part 1, he commented that (in relation to the N97 failures) his ‘sleepless nights are now in the past’. For someone as enthusiastic and as excited about the possibilities of mobile technology, it must have been a galling experience watching the utter derision with which consumers and the media greeted the arrival of the bug-laden disappointing Nokia N97.

What the hell were Nokia doing delivering the N97 into the marketplace as a high-end top-of-the-range device when it was going to get immediate comparisons to other bleeding-edge devices (and be found wanting, by everyone but the die-hard Nokia fans).

Of course the N97 and the N97 mini were a total success. Commercially. Annsi was careful to point this out. They shipped millions of them to their customers. But remember, the customers, of course, were the mobile operators, who, frankly, couldn’t-give-a-damn. They’d already committed to adding the ‘next’ Nokia device into their range whether it was good, bad or entirely rubbish. The end-consumers, however, well… I’m reasonably sure a lot of them fully intend not making the same mistake every again.

I think Annsi is right, however, when he makes the point that consumers really do trust Nokia. Or at least, they want to do so. They will, as Annsi maintains, “give us a second chance.” But just once. I think Nokia really must work hard to make sure that the high-end devices they ship into the marketplace this year are fantastic.

Anyway, to the video. If you’re even half interested in Nokia, if you follow the mobile industry, I strongly recommend sitting and watching Part 3 of the interview.

I’m willing to bet that even the most ardent iPhone and BlackBerry fans reading are closet Nokia fans too…

For convenience I’ve put all the parts together here:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Anssi also goes into some detail about how Symbian fits into the Nokia ecosystem — his answer is a fascinating one. If you’re still thinking Nokia are about to dump the platform, think again. As Anssi points out, the platform is going to continue to be integral to the company’s success, particularly given the fact that MeeGo and Symbian will have Qt and common web runtime as the unifying layer for 85% of application and service development. I’m particularly excited to see what developers will make of this.

Have a watch:

I can well understand this — especially if you’ve got a good revenue stream coming from the App Store. But it does seem a little unhealthy that developers are unwilling to discuss the issue publicly.

“Can I cut and paste anonymously?” I’ve asked quite a few times in response to emails I’ve received.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” comes the frequent reply, “I just wanted to email to let you know my feelings.”

TechFlash from Seattle had a chat with Phil Yerkes, developer of the Hooters Calendar app. Hooters, being a ‘trusted’ brand is ok — and of course, Hooters is all about the concept of good looking all-American girls, rather than nude and naked imagery. So Hooters are fine and Phil is working on the, “no news is good news” policy.

Here’s one email that’s came in — I won’t identity the developer. This isn’t necessarily a view that’s shared by all the developers I’ve talked to — who seem to be working on the wait-and-see hope-it’ll-blow-over approach. It makes for interesting reading.

I’m not usually to swayed by what companies do, but Apple’s censorship has really ticked me off. OK the apps they binned were probably crap (on that basis alone, they should kill another 100,000 or so), but Apple has no right to tell me what I might be offended by.

I dumped my iPhone and picked up a Nokia N97 a couple of weeks ago, and love it. It’s not perfect, but there’s no shortage of apps, and the camera and keyboard alone blow the iPhone away in terms of daily use. If I can’t find an app I want, I’ll just make it (when I have time) with no effing about with fancy developer licenses, no need for special permission from Apple to install WHAT I WANT ONTO MY OWN DEVICE.

Plus N97 has decent (not perfect) Flash support right out of the box. I’m kind of hoping it will gain from the Flash Player 10.1 release, but maybe I’m just dreaming…

No one owns an iPhone – they are just rented. They have to be. No one would permit Apple or any other company such control over something they had actually *bought*.

It’s the devil you know.

The fact is it’s pretty easy to develop on the Apple platform. Further more the distribution mechanism is stupidly simple. I just need to tell you the name of the app and you know how to locate and install it. Purchase, installation, the whole process is magnificently suited to normal mobile users. And we all know it’s possible to make a million-a-month from an iPhone app. Even though precious few are actually (at least, publicly) achieving this.

As I said in my earlier post, this is a tremendous opportunity for BlackBerry, Nokia/Symbian, Microsoft, Palm and Android to stand-up and make it clear that they won’t be behaving like Apple.

One of the exciting points about the mobile industry is that it moves so fast. One announcement can literally change the market — so that everyone needs to turn on a sixpence. For example, the announcement of the iPhone back in Jan 2007 caused business plans and product roadmaps to be re-written. Nokia announcing that navigation is now free with all their new handsets — that’s another example of the industry having to chop and change swiftly reacting to new dynamics, new economics, new platforms. What is extremely unhelpful is when the innovation goes the other way, when all of a sudden what you thought was solid earth is now a swamp. It’s uncalled for, it’s unprofessional and it’s symptomatic of an organisation that doesn’t give a toss about it’s developer community.

This will, as usual, roll on for a little while. Michael Arrington and his team of smarts at TechCrunch will continue to exert pressure. At some point, Apple will feel it needs to wheel out Mr Schiller to placate the developer masses. Temporarily. It’s Apple’s platform. Their choice, their game. But there’s a heck of a lot of developers (and, more importantly, their financial backers — small and large) taking a second glance at the hallowed App Store and wondering… is the grass greener, yet?

Right now I’d say no. Right now if you have $50,000 to spend, developing on the Apple platform is a good bet — because you can guarantee that *getting* the application is useful. It’s your problem to get the word out, though. But if you can get the word out, if you’ve got a partner or a good way of talking to your target audience, you can be successful.

However… RIM’s BlackBerry App World is making a lot of millionaires. Nokia’s platform is hitting the million-a-day download mark consistently. There’s substantial value to being first on those platforms rather than one-of-a-thousand on the iPhone App Store. Both companies have had about a year or so to get their houses in order.

If you’re a developer and you’re reading this, take a closer look at BlackBerry and Nokia. Chances are you’re probably already looking at Android — remember that there were 6m Android units sold last year (stats) versus 34m BlackBerries and 80m Nokia Smartphones — but take a look at those two platforms. If you need any help, I can plug you straight into the right people at either company, just drop me an email (ewan@mobileindustryreview.com).

We spent a lot of time on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz at Mobile World Congress. A lot of time. We even managed to get some time with one of the Product Planners responsible for the device (and sister unit, the Vivaz Pro).

Since Symbian helped cover out costs to get to MWC, it was a dream — a rareified dream — to actually be able to sit down and cover the device in-depth. So much so that I’ve just produced 6 different videos of the Vivaz (on top of the couple we’ve already published). The device is one of the next breed of Symbian devices really does have me reaching for my wallet. I’m looking forward to seeing what Nokia are able to deliver but until then, the Vivaz is clearly one of the front-running top-of-the-range Symbian devices hitting the Western markets.

And it’s coming soon from Vodafone UK. March 9th, to be precise. I seriously might get one of these. The key reason? It’s camera. It comes with an 8.1 megapixel camera that captures HD video — AND it’s got a wickedly cool autofocus function.

Standby, I’ll be publishing these videos shortly.

Theoretically Nokia could spend the next year in bed and still be the dominant player this time next year. The reality of course is that the company is focused on it’s mid-tier portfolio, as the Garnter analyst, Ms Milanesi, points out:

“Nokia will face a tough first half of 2010 as improvement to Symbian and new products based on the Meego platform will not reach the market well before the second half of 2010,” said Ms Milanesi. “Its very strong mid-tier portfolio will help it hold market share, but its ongoing weakness at the high end of the portfolio will hurt its share of market value.”

The developing markets are still going to be buying bucketloads of Nokia handsets, so Nokia’s top chaps are still going to get their bonuses. For us here in the West, though, hoping to once again actually obsess over new high-end Nokia devices, well… it’s going to be quite a long wait.

As for Symbian, well, they’re still comfortably occupying the top spot in the ever mysterious ‘smartphone’ category with 80.8 million units sold this year against RIM’s 34m and iPhones 24m. Of course we’ve seen a decline — Symbian owned 52.4% of the Smartphone market in 2008 against 46.9% in 2009. Android — ever the poster boy of the ‘open’ platforms (which isn’t really very open at all), is languishing at almost 7m devices. Still good, but quite a way to go yet.

If you sit and look at this table, you have to wonder why developers are even bothering with iPhone, Android — and especially Palm:

If you add up iPhone, Android and Palm Smartphone sales in 2009, the total comes to just under 33 million devices. Symbian shipped more than double that. The challenges for developing on the Nokia/Symbian platform are well documented — but the moment Qt becomes a realistic, usable choice for developers (and that moment is coming) — it’s going to be very interesting to see how Symbian users will react to easily consumable mobile applications and services.

Qt, if you haven’t come across it yet, is an all new write-once run-anywhere (well, any supported device) developer environment for Symbian, MeeGo and a whole host of other devices. We’ve got some videos of this coming shortly and whilst it isn’t necessarily going to be all that useful for the current addressable Symbian/Nokia market, the next generation are looking to be phenomenally accessible.

If you’re a mobile developer — or you work in that area, definitely take a look at the videos we’re publishing shortly. I strongly recommend keeping one eye on Symbian and MeeGo whilst your efforts are elsewhere.

What does Lee Williams, Executive Director of Symbian make of the Gartner news?

Here’s a quote I got into my inbox this afternoon:

“We certainly welcome Gartner’s predictions around the renewed vitality of the mobile device market. Earlier this month, we not only announced the latest version of the Symbian platform, Symbian^3, but also that the source code for our platform is now fully open source. The latter announcement represents ten years of investment and billions of dollars worth of code – all of which is now available for download and development by the developer community, for free.

This will foster even greater creativity and innovation in the mobile industry, as now any individual or organisation can take, use and modify the code for any purpose. We look forward to keeping apace with Gartner’s prediction for double digit growth for the mobile industry in 2010.”