There’s a lot of fuss about mobile platforms at the moment. You have Apple, Google, Nokia and Microsoft (in alphabetical order) throwing in their bets. Here’s my 5 cents.
First off, I see the game as Nokia v. Apple, the market leader against the most interesting entrant in years. Google has so far nothing and Microsoft is simply not interesting.
Second, I see the critical difference to be the openness of the platform. Be careful with the official double-talk. Apple wins hands down. They are already years away from Nokia. Here’s why:
- It’s the same proved unix you learned in the school, not some obscure Symbian with flavors
- It’s the same proved open source tools you learned in the school, not some obscure proprietary Nokia development-toy-kit
- It’s full root access to read-write-execute anything, not some obscure Nokia-limited access to the core system with minimum-hundred-of-bucks-year Nokia application signing
Just look at the community evolving around iPhone. No Apple support at all. Still, there are nice easy-to-use installers and hundreds of useful applications to fix what Apple left out (or did not have time or resources to include). I had perhaps one external application (C64 emulator) on my previous Communicator, mainly for testing and demo purposes. Now I have several, and all in relevant use.
You want a good example of open developer-lead innovation, look at iPhone. It lives on because that’s the nature of the community. It does not need Apple, or any other big brother, for that matter. You want a good example of a company-pumped artificial “developer ecosystem”, look at Symbian. Without Nokia, it dies.
As a Finn, I can only hope that Nokia would finally adopt their Linux-experiment (used so far only in the N800 tablet) into their latest phones. That would mean some serious investment in openness. I don’t actually see much options for them now. Opening up Symbian wouldn’t mean anything. It’s a technological dead-end.
Update 23.11: I learned from a student who sells handsets in one of the major malls in the Helsinki region that during the last six months just one customer bought an N800 and another once asked it. She sells about 20 handsets every day, half of them being the N95. Some have even asked for an iPhone even though it has been available only in the United States. – Another student noted that he had been trying to “develop” out of curiosity a hello-world application to his Nokia phone with Nokia’s tools for two days without success.
