Mobile OS market is overcrowded, states Nokia VP

After a year of unrelenting bad news, Nokia has opened 2010 with bullish statements concerning its future. Chief among them is that the market cannot support the 14 to 15 mobile operating system currently on offer, but will reduce by two-thirds as market scale drives the smaller developers to extinction.

"There is definitely not enough room for more than four to five mobile operating systems," said Nokia's mobile phone exec VP, Rick Simonson. "Scale is critical. For instance, Palm's OS is very good, but with less than one per cent of the global volumes, it won't be too appealing to developers."

Commenting further, Simonson claimed that open operating systems would play a significant role in Nokia's future success. "We have the power of an open operating system coupled with the open distribution model that is not restricted by geographical or technology boundaries. Look at our targets for any segment of our devices for 2010 -- they are all 2 to 10 times that of any of our competitors."

However, Simonson also admitted that the company had faltered in the smartphone space over the past 18 months, but the decline had stopped and stablised in the second and third quarters of 2009. "The New Year will see [our] recovery in smartphones with the introduction of Maemo and the stabilisation of the Symbian operating system."

For more on this story:
Economic Times

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