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« Nokia Misery in Single Pictures: Today part 8 in series: The Elop Strategy to Go Windows from Feb 11, 2011. At the 2 year anniversary, what do we now see? | Main | Winners in the 'Guess Windows Phone Market Share in Q4 of 2012' contest from November 2011 »

February 13, 2013

Comments

RC

Hi Tomi,
Seems now Nokia list S40 as smartphone as well.
is that also included in the data?

glonq

A small correction: there was no Windows Phone 6. It was "Windows Mobile" up until 6.5, then it became Windows Phone 7.

Stephen

Q: Does this data include TECNO & all the cheap MediaTek-powered Android phones sold in the developing markets?

Tomi T Ahonen

RC - no, of course not, S40 is not a smartphone, no matter how much Elop cries and demands they be counted

glonq - thanks

Stephen - Stephen, of course, these are global numbers all Mediatek Android based smartphones are included.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

cycnus

Tomi,

I was wondering if you know Micromax, I heard they have a successful android lineup in India

Tomi T Ahonen

Hi cygnus

Yes, Micromax is a big handset player in India but the India smartphone market is still in its early stages so without vast international sales, they won't register in the Top 20 yet.. but am monitoring them, they can become big as India smartphone sales pick up, to do something similar to what Lenovo did almost exclusively inside China...

Tomi Ahonen :-)

Interested to know

Very informative.

Scary to see how badly Windows is doing versus how Microsoft and Nokia pretend it's doing in public. Dirty tricks, smoke and mirrors, lies, damned lies, and statistics - nothing is going to save Windows Phone.

zlutor

@Tomi: what makes an OS/phone 'smart' in mobile domain?

I also do not like the tricks NOkia is trying to make with S40 - actually part of it, Full-Touch Ashas - to be counted as 'smartphone like' but in fact they
- can be customized
- apps are available
- email, internet available
- social networks can be reached
- etc.

So, at the end of the day, they could be categorized smart - or not?

Why if latter one?

pingpong

@zlutor
Series 40 can run Java Apps for years (like Symbian can/could- bridging the developer ecosystems of Series40 and Symbian to some extend)- never anybody wasted a thought on Series 40 Phones being smartphones. The only new thing on Asha full touch compared to Touch&Type Series 40 is "full touch". btw: Samsungs Star Series phones are "full touch" but not considered smartphones.

zlutor

@pingpong: I know they are j2me capable - but what makes a phone 'smart' then if not all(!) the things I mentioned above? Seriously! Running java app is just one thing - even Nokia 110 is capable of doing it...

We all use the term 'smartphone' but do we know what does it really mean?

chithanh

@glonq
When Microsoft launched Windows Phone 7, they renamed Windows Mobile 6.5 to Windows Phone 6.5.

@zlutor
Actually, the S40 Internet capabilities are not so smart. The phone is a dumb terminal which displays web pages that were preprocessed and simplified on Nokia servers.

There has been some controversy around the fact that Nokia acted as man-in-the-middle even for SSL(https) connections, as all passwords, banking details etc. were passing through their server farm in clear text. After being called out in public for it, they stopped decrypting user traffic (but still route it through their servers).

vladkr

Tomi,

There is one fact you're wrong about ; Elop is not in panic, why would he ?
He still earns between 5M and 10M a year despite poor results, and no-one is about to fire him.

His salary is only the visible part of the iceberg as he can use it for some trading game :

Soon, there will be the MWC and some teasing (EOS for example) to excite traders, then there will be the annual general meeting, where Nokia is about to issue shares, which will make its value dive again - that's exactly what happened to Ericsson before becoming SE - then again some teasing... he might triple his salary, like last year.

daz

What makes a smartphone, good question, I think one feature that Asha series are missing is GPS and good performance. Possibly it's also missing other sensors (accelerometer, gyroscope, compass)

Sander van der Wal

The argument that only smartphone market share is important does not fly.

If its OS is also powering other devices, and if the apps running will be able to work on all devices, then that OS is much more important than the smartphone figures suggest. It also means that the ranking of the OS'es doesn't mean much. The fate of the OS is not decided in just the smartphone market.

And finally, both Android and iOS are used as tablet OS'es. And all the other wish they had a tablet to power. So there is no disadvantage for any of the OS'es not to have the tablet category taken into account.

Tleilaxu Mentat

crApple's success is mostly undeserved, facilitated mostly by the biased US mainstream tech media practicing "economic jingoism" and acting like a mindless echo chamber regurgitating the same reality distortion field marketing claptrap and then further led on by bandwagoneering, carpetbagging stock market analysts which have it in their financial interest to "pump&dump" crApple stock. Well, the lies & propaganda would soon catch up to them:

http://readwrite.com/2013/02/11/whos-manipulating-apple-stock-with-this-iwatch-story

http://www.businessinsider.com/wsj-apple-is-quietly-sending-the-press-more-reports-2013-2

Mikko

I guess one criterion to classify phones by would be true multitasking. I don't mean being able to play music in the background, but actually being able to run arbitrary multiple apps at the same time and switch between them. Nokia S40 is clearly not able to do this, and it's a major limitation.

Tleilaxu Mentat

Certain websites seem eager to pass on Apple propaganda while suspending their usual powers of journalistic scrutiny which seem reserved only for Apple's rivals (not including Google).

Here, we certainly have another classic Apple stock-manipulation rumor, desperately trying to decelerate the continuing decline in Apple stock which has already wiped hundreds of billions of dollars off the value of the company.

Hence also the desperate cries of "we're not doomed" from Apple's propaganda machine, now stuck in a pathological overdrive:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-12/apple-said-to-have-team-developing-wristwatch-computer.html

cycnus

@Miko

The real issue is not what define smartphoneOS, but Elop trying to manipulate the public. Elop were trying to make Lumia seems very successful.

Winter

@Miko
"I guess one criterion to classify phones by would be true multitasking."

Actually, I do not think there is much point in trying to come up with a real definition.

If you look at word-use, a Smartphone is simply a phone the can do what the original iPhone 1 or 2 could do. I would pick iPhone 2 as a cut-off. But that is personal taste.

Obviously, the expectations increase with time. It questionable whether the iPhone 1 would still be considered "powerful".

Tester

The first iPhone couldn't even install apps. It was even more useless than a featurephone of the same time.

I personally classify a smartphone as a device that is capable of installing and running applications that have full access to the device's native user interface.

This would rule out everything using J2ME as it programming platform but conveniently include all systems that are generally considered 'smart' today.

So, no iPhone1, clearly, but also no S40.

The comments to this entry are closed.

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