Agenda
Symbian provides for an agenda application for scheduling and keeping track of to-do items.
Messaging
Symbian enables SMS (Short Text Messaging Service) for text messaging, EMS (Enhanced Messaging Service) for formatted text and image messaging and MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) to send multimedia, video and audio. MMS is a 3G standard specified by the WAP forum for 3G networks. However, network operators across Europe are deploying MMS over GPRS (2.5 G) networks using WAP. MMS is not a real-time service. It uses a store-and-forward protocol.
Other Symbian applications include:
Office
Symbian provides for a light-weight spreadsheet application and a word processor application. Moreover, Symbian’s Word converter converts between plain text and a Symbian OS Word model stream.
Browser
Symbian provides the Opera web browser for Internet access.
Games
The latest Symbian phones include computer games.
- Telephony
Symbian provides the first JavaPhone implementation and supports multimode telephony. It supports both GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) and CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) standards. GSM is the dominant cellular standard outside North America. GSM uses TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) to assign time slots to users. Each user has a SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card with user account information that can be removed and inserted into any GSM phone. CDMA is largely used in North America. Users share a broad spectrum to transmit low-powered coded signals simultaneously. The receiver knows each user’s code and decodes the noise to communicate. CDMA allows for soft hand-offs when users move from one receiver to another. By supporting both GSM and CDMA, Symbian is positioning itself as the global mobile phone operating system standard.
- Communications and Data Synchronization
Symbian supports communication protocols like TCP/IP. In addition, data synchronization is achieved through the SyncML standard. SyncML enables data synchronization from any application on any device over any network. SyncML allows messages to be synchronized over infrared, Bluetooth and USB. With Symbian, over-the –air synchronization of contacts and agenda information can be achieved.
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a standard for creating ad-hoc wireless LANs and operates on a globally-available radio frequency. Symbian implements Bluetooth and thus, allows users to conveniently create ad-hoc wireless connections to transfer data.
- User Interface
Symbian provides a User Interface framework that allows each mobile phone hardware manufacturer to customize its user interface with the same Symbian operating system. Symbian supports input from a QWERTY keyboard, a pen-based touch screen and a numeric mobile phone keypad.
- Other Features
Symbian has implemented other features so that it can be customized to individual markets (International Support). In addition, Symbian was built with a solid foundation to ensure its future evolution and development (Security and Open Standards and Interoperability).
International Support
Symbian supports Unicode characters for input, display and conversion to other character sets. Thus, the Symbian operating system can be used around the world, in different languages, and customized for each individual market.
Security
Symbian’s security implementation enables data confidentiality, integrity and authentication through security protocols such as SSL and IPSec. It also supports the authentication of installable software using digital signatures.
Symbian supports encryption and certification management to authenticate both the user and the service providers. Security is a key feature to enable m-Commerce (mobile Commerce).
Open Standards and Interoperability
Symbian provides a core set of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to facilitate the development of new applications by independent software vendors. Symbian enables mobile phones to be a platform for deployment of new customized applications and services in different languages, customized to the local market.
The Impact of Symbian on the Mobile Phone Industry
Mobile communications and mobile information technology are at last starting to converge. Phones that manage personal information, personal companions that phone home, and laptops that airlink, all indicate that there is a viable demand for integrated wireless technologies.
By the middle of this decade, there will be about 1.5 billion mobile phones in use worldwide. It is certain that as we move from basic digital phone networks to high-speed 2.5 and third-generation (3G) infrastructure, there will be more sophisticated operating systems that will empower an increasingly wide variety of high-technology handsets.
We'll see operating systems that will exploit the high-speed networks that are being planned and built today. These systems are envisioned to operate every application imaginable from videoconferencing and music downloading to remote gaming and mobile commerce.
Within these trends and developments, Symbian aims to be in the forefront. It strives to make its mark in the industry by developing a cutting edge operating system that will exploit the exciting possibilities of next-generation mobile telephony.
An Analysis of Symbian’s Market Strategy
The success of Symbian depends on whether its product strengths can overcome its product weaknesses and whether the mobile device industry’s opportunities can overcome the industry’s threats. The section below analyzes Symbian’s market strategy with a SWOT analysis, by discussing its Product Strengths, Product Weaknesses, Industry Opportunities and Industry Threats.
1. Product Strengths
Symbian Consortium
Symbian is owned by a consortium of major mobile phone manufacturers: Ericsson, Matsushita (Panasonic), Motorola, Nokia, Psion, Siemens and Sony Ericsson.
As the owners of Symbian are major mobile phone manufacturers, Symbian is guaranteed to be implemented by the largest mobile phone manufacturers globally. Due to the large influence of the Symbian consortium, about 80% of global cell phone manufacturers are purchasing Symbian licenses.
With the convergence of PDAs and mobile phones, mobile phone manufacturers are banding together to compete aggressively against PDA manufacturers. PDA-Phone devices will increasingly be sold by network providers, like cell phones are sold today. Since Symbian is owned by a consortium of mobile phone manufacturers, who already have established relationships with network providers, Symbian may have an advantage over Microsoft who is still working on developing those relationships for its PocketPC product.
Superior Technology - Flexibility and Differentiation
Symbian is an open standard, modular and future-proof operating system. It is designed to be highly configurable and flexible. Thus, phone manufacturers and network providers can create a customized version of the Symbian OS for their respective markets and differentiate themselves competitively.
The Symbian consortium developed the Symbian OS based on four basic principles to ensure the superiority of its technology:
- Symbian will be compatible with existing technologies
- Symbian will be highly configurable to conform to the requirements of the network and the user
- Each consortium member will cooperate in the identification, support, and development of Symbian
- Symbian will be an open standard to facilitate rapid adoption by the whole industry.
Symbian’s technology is disruptive because it will revolutionize the market by interrupting the path of the incumbent technology. Symbian introduces a new set of rules and imposes a new set of processes, entirely different from its predecessors. Thus, it is expected to transform the mobile device industry in new ways.
Symbian is designed to be Future-Proof
The Symbian OS was designed to support smart mobile phones, on next-generation networks. Also, it was also constructed to accommodate future improvements in the mobile phone industry.
The Symbian OS was designed to be “future-proof” and evolve as technology changes over time. The Symbian architecture is based on open-standards and can support a variety of complex functional requirements.
Symbian OS is suited for Packet-Switched Networks
Network operators are beginning to invest in packet-switching technology, such as 2.5G and 3G networks. They are deploying these networks on a large scale, in order to capitalize on the new revenue streams that will be enabled by the new services that can be deployed on these networks.
The Symbian OS is well suited to the new 2.5G and 3G packet switching for the following reasons:
- Symbian is Natively IP-Based
With fully integrated communications and messaging, Symbian is a multi-tasking operating system, designed for real-world packet-switched environments, while maintaining superior voice capabilities.
- Symbian Supports Open Standards
The Symbian OS source code has been released through licensing agreements. The objective is to encourage third party development of Symbian compatible software, and therefore, positioning Symbian at the forefront of wireless development. Symbian has been designed to support open standards to facilitate interoperability and system-to-system communication.
- Symbian Implements Cutting-Edge Technologies
Symbian is currently implementing the latest technology standards that are emerging. Examples of these are standards include: Bluetooth, WAP, MMS, SyncML, IPv6 and WCDMA. All of these will be significant technologies for mobile phones in a packet-switched environment.
2. Product Weaknesses
Despite its many strengths, Symbian is also disadvantaged compared to its competitors for the following reasons:
Lack of mobile phone operating system programmers
Mobile phone operating system programming is a highly specialized skill. Although there are a number of software programmers, experienced cell phone operating system programmers are rare. The long-term success of Symbian depends on continually evolving its operating system to improve existing features and introduce new services. If it is unable to recruit and retain top-notch mobile phone operating system programmers, its product will not be as competitive as the PDA-based products.
High investment cost with the introduction of a new product
Despite the current economic downturn, Symbian needs to invest a large amount of money to market its new brand and position its new product in the global market. These are costs that its competitors, with established brands, do not have to incur.
Dependency on network providers to upgrade to 3G (3rd Generation) networks
In order to fully leverage the capabilities of Symbian, network providers need to upgrade to 3G (3rd Generation) networks. Network providers may be slow to upgrade due to the high investment, which will give time for Symbian’s competitors to catch up and develop their own version of a PDA-Phone operating system.
3. Industry Opportunities
The need for a new mobile phone operating system
The increasing demand for new mobile services, such as interactive messaging and data services are exhausting the limited capabilities of old mobile phone operating systems. The mobile phone market now requires a new operating system that has the ability to accommodate increasing user requirements and emerging market technologies.
Product convergence
Users are demanding integrated devices to eliminate the need to carry multiple products. This is the reason why PDAs have become so popular, because it is able to combine the functionality of a planner, a calculator and a computer in one device.
As a result of this trend, hardware manufacturers are integrating more products together such as a digital camera, an mp3 player and a cell phone in one unit. For many hardware manufacturers, the goal is to create a single portable device that will accommodate all voice and data applications.
Emergence of Packet-Switched Networks and Applications
Additional revenue streams from packet-switched networks will motivate network operators to upgrade their existing cellular infrastructure over time. In European markets, messaging proved to be a major revenue generator for network operators, and this will likely occur in North America during the first phase of the upgrade to packet-switched networks.
Symbian’s management team believes that Multimedia Messaging (MMS) will be highly successful when it is introduced and is expecting it to be a key revenue stream for network operators. Unlike text messaging, MMS provides the capability of sending rich multimedia content to mobile phones. Initial implementations of MMS will produce messages that include images, animated graphics, and sounds. Future versions will include more complex formats, such as video streaming, which will be possible once MMS moves to an IP-bearer (instead of WAP). These rich multimedia services can only be delivered by an advanced mobile operating system, like Symbian.
4. Industry Threats
Although the mobile phone industry is full of opportunities, Symbian also faces some industry threats:
- First, there is the threat of existing PDA manufacturers who want a mobile-enabled PDA operating system integrated into their devices.
- Second, there is the threat of industry giant Microsoft who possesses a big chunk of the PC operating system market share.
- Third, there is also the threat from other open-source software vendors of embedded operating systems.
- Lastly, there is the potential conflict among the members of the Symbian alliance.
Cell Phone-PDA Competition
Leading PDA manufacturers (Palm, Microsoft) are aware of the changing market and recognize the need to develop integrated mobile devices. As a result, they are developing proprietary software that will allow their PDA O/S to accommodate voice services. One example is the Q-phone of Qualcomm which uses the Palm OS. Moreover, Qualcomm has announced the integration of Windows CE onto CDMA chips.
PDA manufacturers are likely to compete aggressively against Symbian to retain their market share.
Microsoft Threat
Microsoft poses a threat to Symbian on several fronts: technical know-how, market dominance and strategic alliances.
First, Microsoft has the technical know-how to develop an operating system with the same or more advanced capabilities as the Symbian OS.
Secondly, over 80 percent of all network data reside in corporate databases which are accessed through Microsoft's Windows and Exchange. Thus, corporate buyers of mobile devices will demand interoperability with Microsoft's products.
Lastly, Microsoft is currently trying to seize the wireless OS market by developing a strategic alliance with Qualcomm, the pioneer of the CDMA wireless communications protocol.
Open-Source
Other open source software, third party embedded systems, as well as the popularity of the Linux OS, will pose a threat to Symbian. For example, 1MB of a customized Linux operating system can run a smart phone. And with the recent release of its first complete open-source integrated development environment, developing Linux applications will become even easier.
Other embedded operating systems that threaten the Symbian movement are pSOS or VxWorks. Intel's StrongARM chips can now support these embedded technologies. Datalight, Vadem, iReady, GoAhead, EmWare, and Pharlap all provide embedded Internet connectivity and OS capabilities, and all will be competing with Symbian. Such competition can drive down the price of mobile phone operating systems and eventually, Symbian’s profitability.
Consortium Conflict
The Symbian consortium consists of players who are competing in the same market. As are result, the stability of this alliance in the future is questionable since conflicts may occur due to each shareholder’s vested interests.
It is clear that consortium members have not forgotten that they are simply competitors aligned for a common cause. For example, Nokia has developed its own smart-phone software in-house, whereas Motorola purchased Starfish Software, a company that develops software for mobile devices. The in-house development initiatives of individual consortium members may eventually end up competing directly with Symbian.
The Competition
The mobile device market is defined by products that consist of a wireless phone and also enhanced PDA functionalities. The competition for Symbian’s operating system includes the PocketPC from Microsoft and OS5 from PALM. The following table compares the three operating systems available in the market today.
The marketing strategies of the different mobile device operating system manufacturers are different. PALM OS5 is targeted at current or previous owners of PALM products who like the PALM interface. PALM OS5 is designed to leverage most of the PALM OS applications and be customized to the end user. In the case of Pocket PC, Microsoft is trying to break into the mobile device market with a product that has similar functionality as Windows and its most popular applications. Symbian’s strategy differs from PALM and Microsoft. Symbian is producing its own operating system targeted at users with both a traditional PDA and cell phone.
PALM OS5 and Symbian both generate revenue by licensing its operating systems to cell phone/PDA manufacturers. For example, in Symbian charges a fee for every cell phone with the Symbian OS installed.
Initially, Symbian is likely to have an upper hand compared to its competitors because the Symbian consortium of cell phone manufacturers owns 80% of the mobile phone hardware market. Moreover, Symbian OS is built with open standards and open APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), allowing its licensers to customize it to their local markets.
Comparison of three advanced mobile device products in the market
Advanced mobile devices with phone and PDA capability are already available in the market today. The below table compares 3 leading mobile devices running on Symbian, PocketPC and the PALM OS.
Price of the Service
The following table shows the price of the service for these devices. The total cost of the service depends on the voice and data service selected from the service providers. The cost of the data varies according the amount of data used.
Conclusion
There are three key success factors for Symbian to be successful in the mobile device market: network providers must upgrade to 3G packet-switching networks, Symbian must stay ahead of Microsoft, and Symbian must garner enough support from mobile phone application developers to ensure that its operating system provides users with the latest features and functionality.
First, the Symbian consortium needs to encourage, motivate and influence mobile service providers to upgrade their networks to accommodate packet-switching technology. In line with this, advertising efforts must be stepped up to make consumers aware of the possibilities of 3G networks. Symbian should also emphasize the convenience of a 2-in-1 PDA/Phone device in its marketing.
Secondly, Symbian must proactively combat the looming threat of Microsoft. Cell phone manufacturers must band together to take the appropriate steps to curb Microsoft’s infringement into their market. The Symbian consortium must overcome their conflicting interests and be unified in their efforts to continually evolve Symbian as the global cell phone operating system standard.
Lastly, Symbian must encourage application development on its operating system to facilitate easy deployment and adoption of Symbian as an industry standard. To complement this move, Symbian must penetrate key markets such as Europe, Asia and the U.S. and capture the market share of the technology innovators in those markets, so that it will become the leading product globally, when it is ready for adoption by the mass market.
Appendix A – Standards Supported by Symbian
Appendix B – Sources of Reference
Articles
ZDNet TechUpdate – Symbian OS V 7.0
Red Herring
“The Symbian Liberation”
Symbian
White paper: Creating Symbian OS Phones
News Resources
Competitors
Symbian: The Convergence of Voice and Data
Must be provided by the mobile service provider
It is not using PALM OS 5. Actually, there are no products that integrate a PDA and a cell phone using PALM OS5.