Reda’s Social-Network Independent Pages

I (as many other people in the blogosphere strangely enough) don’t have a lot of time to write a proper post, so I’ll just post some quick "notes".
I think the starting point is the fact that Nokia wants to keep having a fat profit in the near and long term future and can only do so by delivering internet services as well as selling mobile phones. There is a lot that can be said about the strategy alone but let’s take it as the starting point of the discussion on the new Symbian Foundation
Shifting the strategy and focusing a lot of efforts on Internet Services is a very bold step for a mobile vendor and there are a lot of points to consider during the execution of this strategy. Which is the one that is "connected" to Symbian OS? Mass market. I.e. Nokia can only monetise from its Internet services if it can build a big community. How? Assuming Nokia has created a web service which is equal, if not better than its competitors, the next step would be to build the tools to make as easy as possible to use these services from a mobile and start marketing the product. Stealing a customer from Flickr or convincing a novice mobile user to use these services has a cost; it’s not easy to quantify but it has a cost and Symbian is one of the choices to get where Nokia wants to be (1) before everyone else (2) at the lowest cost…Symbian is the best "Ovi" to Nokia services because it has brand value for Nokia, it has a substantial market share already and in the short term, building the tools to access Nokia’s Internet Services should be cheaper than any other operating system considering the current investment Nokia has. There is currently only one barrier to mass market: Symbian (or any other mobile operating system) is not a commodity and giving it out for free is the way to go (I am deliberately excluding Android from the discussion). It’s funny that Nokia is going to be the catalyst of one of things they have been fighting for years… the depreciation of the operating system.

Sorry, I said quick post but I ended up with 355 words. I’ll try to be more concise next time.

Related Links:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUKN2330144220080624

http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2008/06/symbian-changes-everything-and-nothing.html

http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/do-mobile-os-platforms-matter

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2008/tc20080629_791774.htm