I recently returned from a day in San Francisco, CA where I had a chance to attend a special Symbian Partner event - interesting timing for this event as just this past week the Nokia purchase of Symbian became final (the ink wasn't even dry yet). Also of interest was the presence of keynote speaker Roger Smith from AT&T, coincidentally, just last week AT&T had announced the company will be reducing about 4% of their workforce - they also officially announced that they would be carrying the Nokia 6650 - an entry-level S60 3rd Edition, FP 2 Symbian device (flip) - it's a start! 

So, how do partners in North America get involved working with symbian? This was likely a question on the minds of many of the attendees at the Symbian Partner event that took place in San Francisco, CA on December 4, 2008. Simply put, to work with Symbian, attending events like this one is a great start. Post event, the newly launched Symbian Foundation and the Symbian Developer Network are other must-use resources. As the event kicked off, the message from Symbian was that This [America] is now very much THE place to focus on - when you consider that recent industry research findings reveal that Americans now use 2X more txt messaging than Europeans do this is indeed the case!

 The buzzword of the moment at Symbian Event was "Change"; look for a change moving forward as Symbian is aligning much closer to Nokia, obviously thanks to the recent finalization of Nokia taking over ownership of Symbian Ltd. But there’s also another key driving force for change and even more innovation is being stimulated due to the move of the Symbian OS to open source via the Symbian foundation. A bold move was made in migrating the software to open source… people needed proven software that was free in order to adopt and innovate.

 So important is this move to change that Symbian CEO, Nigel Clifford, was not able to make his planned trip to San Francisco as he was in London dealing with his CEO obligations while Symbian transitioned to a Nokia-owned corporate entity. We were informed that the partner event was in-fact to be the final official "Symbian Ltd" event and that, moving forward, similar events would be official Symbian Foundation planned events. Symbian foundation was being held up by approvals etc... and now the real work is coming as a new director has been appointed and it's time to roll - Recall Symbian was started in June 1998 and is now 10 years old, perhaps more impressive, there are now tens of thousands of Symbian OS supported applications. An impressive figure supporting the Symbian Mission to be the most widely used software on the planet.

 Moving forward, Nokia-owned Symbian and Symbian Foundation will be working on the new symbian partner network with new events (like this one) and there’s an entirely new online developer program: papers, interviews, and much info related to the developer. As we speak, Nokia nd Symbian employees are working on the transition as Symbian crew will be wearing Nokia hats and employees will take up key roles transitioning Symbian to open source - no small task!

Symbian in the USA

Much to-do has been made about Nokia trying to catch up with Apple and the iPhone in the US marketplace, however, this may not be a simple task. Nokia has announced what many are calling their "iPhone killer", the Nokia N97 touch UI smartphone (and much more), however, I’ll make a guess that it will be some time before this device is spotted in use here in North America - this was indeed confirmed at Symbian Partner event as we're told Europe will see this device first (naturally) with further geographic rolls-outs after that. Furthermore, until Joe U.S. Consumer can get himself an S60 smartphone for about $200 (subsidized plan) these amazing devices simply won’t wind up in the hands of American consumers. We heard speakers XX at the Partner event reiterate the mindset of the US mobile consumer who is essentially a slave to his/her carrier, constantly being locked into a contract, limited to device upgrades to about every 2 years, and typically will only "upgrade" to a mobile that is offered at a subsidized cost of no more than $200. Too bad really, as S60 smartphones are true mobile workhorses and are a fine compliment to any power mobile user, particularly those craving location-aware applications, services, and constant data connectivity.

 Moving forward, I'm thinking that Nokia is going to need more than a touch UI smartphone to gain some penetration in the US and start taking advantage of their ownership of NAVTEQ and their new role in creating the Symbian Foundation (think open source OS) - recall Nokia has turned the Symbian OS over to the Open Source Community similar to what we saw a few years ago in Geotechnologies with Autodesk turning Mapguide over to open source and the subsequent creation of OSGeo foundation.

 Of particular interest, Roger Smith of AT&T was on hand at Symbian Partner event to provide a look at AT&T and the evolving mobile landscape. Smith reminded us how the mobile space (US) was all about the network in the past as people bought carrier plan based on the coverage map. After that it was about the device, with customers flocking to devices that wowed and engaged them; now it’s mostly about the mobile experience where the full suite is available to the user. Key to the customer are advertising, delivery, service and there will be a fight to see who’s in the best position to deliver the best experience. It seems that with AT&T so visibly present as such an event that they figure that Symbian OS devices will be key in helping them deliver the consumer the experience that she wants.

Putting things in Context

 Perhaps most intriguing from Smith was his comments about the following: "...conditions are right for mobile data to out value the web - Recall it was all about the 3Cs, yet now we have a 4th C - Context - which is easier to deliver to the mobile. Enter the Web 3.0 which Smith defined as the 4th C + P(personalization) + VS (vertical search). Smith is confident that Symbian devices will play a role in the future as AT&T focuses on delivering a winning mobile experience that’s better than the web.

AT&T now offers branded navigation apps via the AT&T navigator, yet they also have Mapquest navigator or users can experience Google Maps mobile which is supported by many AT&T devices. Smith discussed briefly the following topics and I picked up on the following tidbits - perhaps some indication of what we can expect down the road:

• The quest for the UI where one size fits all needs to be tailored and personalized
• Increasing attractiveness to mobile developer
•  Developers need to look at revenue projections. Currently mobile messaging and txt messaging is THE killer application in north America and there’s many opportunities that exist to take advantage of this
• Potential hot markets:
  Subscriber driven revenue streams - apps and content, messaging, email, transport
  Marketing and advertising ads and ad supp content, search, mobile marketing
  Commerce and payments -bank, payments, p2p
  B2C B2B, health edu
• Trends exist in specialty vertical devices (AT&T is not spending much effort on this currently but it's an untapped market). Fleet, telematics, telemetry, POS, alarm monitoring, meter reading - big opportunities exist here! Currently there are about 250 specialty devices supported by the AT&T network.
• Mobile software fragmentation is a global problem that we are engaged in and solving
• Trend is towards the smartphone - there’s significant growth in this market in the USA
  

No specific talk concerning the Nokia N97 took place, however, one was left wondering if AT&T would be the carrier to offer this device to the mass market next year. Indeed, it's an interesting concept to grasp, particularly when you consider that AT&T is THE carrier for iPhone in the USA... are we expected to believe that some time next year the company will be promoting the N97 (aka. iPhone killer??)... personally I find that a tough one to swallow. It seemed that most people in attendance were on the same page, thinking that the only way that high-end S60 smartphones (N95, N96, N97 etc...) would wind up en mass in the hands of the US consumer would be if a heavily subsidized device was made available by a carrier - overall we weren't very optimistic that this would happen. Until then, word has it to expect an N97 release sometime later in 2009, likely after June with initial roll-out in Europe and the US marketplace getting treated sometime after that... stay tuned I guess!

The following images were captured on December 4th at Symbian Partner event, San Francisco, CA (Image credit: Glenn Letham) 

Enough on that topic... if you’re interested, a number of images from San Fran and Symbian Partner Event are now up on this flickr - see also below:
 

Launching next year in Europe - unless a mobile device in the US retails for about $200 at a subsidized rate, many feel it will be a tough play in the US!