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Comment by irons | Hacker News Reader

As difficult a situation as Palm is in, I was reading that article thinking Nokia is in far worse shape. WebOS remains just a promising also-ran next to iOS, Blackberry, Android, and presumably WP7, but MeeGo doesn't even rate mentioning, and Symbian is a walking corpse.

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I recently needed a second phone for work and bought a cheap Symbian phone, and I have to say was very positively surprised. Half the price of the cheapest android phone, MUCH better battery life, really easy to use for calling and texting, yet still has wifi, GPS, browser etc if you ever really need them. In fact I'm starting wonder to if cheap symbian phone plus iPod touch (or Android equivalent) isn't a better overall solution than buying the latest high-end smartphone.

90% of potential cell phone customers aren't looking for a smartphone, they don't currently have any sort of phone and guess who makes all the cheap waterproof rugged phones.

hint - the next billion customers don't live near Apple stores.

You'd be surprised. Worldwide mobile phone ownership is up to 5 billion[0]. Meanwhile, much of the first world has already transitioned to smartphones.

If you wanted to jump on the cheap phone trend, you're ten years late. Whatever margins existed once are now gone. Nokia, the king of cheap phones, just fired their CEO and replaced him with a software guy from Microsoft. Apple, HP and Blackberry know exactly what market their fighting over.

[0]: http://www.poder360.com/article_detail.php?id_article=4704

That doesn't mean that smartphones can't get better & cheaper, displacing some of the feature phones. Smartphones are ~26% of the entire market, I'll give you the source for that tomorrow.

The source is Mobile Business Briefing.

Is that five billion individual owners? That's pretty impressive! Current estimates put the whole world population at just under 7 billion.

http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html has it at about 6.8B, and a Google search on "current world population" turns up similar figures.

Last stats I saw showed that for W Europe the average user had owned >5 handsets.

You are wrong - the next billion (or two!) live next door to China, from where we are seeing the emergence of the first sub $200 (full, unlocked price) phones this month [http://www.priceindia.in/tv/spice-mi-300-price-%E2%80%93-che...]

That price figure is going to fall way, way lower once the Android supporting Mediatek chipsets enter full production [http://www.electronicsweekly.com/blogs/david-manners-semicon...]

I predict $100 Mediatek-powered Android smartphones by summer 2011, flooding the Asian market.

What about the Asian market more than 10km from the coastal cities?

The same market that has one Nokia1100 per village in Africa aren't about to buy $100 smartphones for each of their kids.

That particular market is snapping at Nokia's heels as well. While its sales have stagnated, new contenders have risen very fast in the ultra-low cost market

[http://toostep.com/debate/two-year-old-micromax-becomes-indi...]

Good luck getting Android to run fast on a low-powered 100$ device.

You might need luck if you assume that the industry is standing still and chips and batteries aren't getting cheaper and more powerful...

Sub-$100 Android devices that "run fast" are inevitable. The only question is how soon.

hint: you don't make much money selling dumbphones, no matter market share.

It looks like Nokia is the next to die after Microsoft's demise three years ago.

I think the biggest battles in the smartphone market are yet to come.

I have an iPhone 3GS and I love it, and while the iPhone is considered the best smartphone yet I see multiple problems with it ...

     - piss-poor battery life ... yes, I recharge it at night but there are days 
       when I forget about it ... the other Symbian-based smartphone I have 
       can last for 3 days - basically I'm not using the iPhone as a phone 
       (too unreliable)

    - no replaceable battery

    - the UI paradigm is lacking in areas Microsoft / WebOS / Android seem 
      to address ... those app icons are taking valuable screen estate without 
      much usefulness 

    - valuable applications aren't properly integrated with iOS ... I have the    
      following apps: Skype, YMessenger, Twitter and Facebook; and none 
      of them are saving contact info in my iPhone's contacts. This is one area 
      Windows Mobile 7 seems to be addressing

    - the notifications are really fucking disruptive ... it 
      interrupted my TowerMadness game multiple times :)

    - for developers you need OS X / Xcode for development, 
      and this can be a PITA. WinMo7 probably has the best developer tools 
      available.

    - iOS has Game Center, but Microsoft has the XBox console market and 
      XBox Live upcoming in WinMo 7. Depending on their implementation, 
      the XBox Live integration can be groundbreaking.

    - WinMo7 will probably have the best Office integration you can get on a 
      smartphone.

And I don't own an Android phone, but I see lots of fragmentation problems and poor management of the marketplace.

Bottom line being: lots of areas where iOS / Android could be improved, lots of room left for competition.

Don't count on Microsoft / Nokia being dead, yes big corporations are rigid and have a hard time changing directions, but they still have lots of resources, lots of talent and the duty to reinvent themselves when the shit hits the fan.

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