Xoj said:
thats engadget, everybody knows they hate nokia because symbian sells x5 what the iphone does. they actually gained 6% of marketshare last quarter, and samsung uses symbian too. their sales increase, but RIM and iphone were getting bigger increase due the US. the thing nokia share Worldwide it's bigger. if u put android, iphone and rim together, they barely pass nokia. and thats also old news, 5800 was a success selling over 10 millions in a few months, a n97 was 3 million in the first months of sales. |
Sir, you are very, very wrong. Its not Engaget, it is analyst firms that track smartphone OS penetration. Symbian has lost marketshare for quite some time, and so has Nokia.
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/10728_Gartner_Q3_2009_Smartphone_Sal.php
Nokia dropped from 42.3% in Q3 of 2008 to 39.3% in 2009. That is from Gartner which is the largest, best, and most accurate firm concerning handset penetration.
@Mrstickball: As i said, it's the growth that makes the devs interested in the platform. Once it's not growing as it currently is and the market becomes oversupplied - then what?
Smartphones, and everything they are used for, is experiencing growth because they fit into a segment in multiple markets. What's happening is, that they grab their share of the markets but that's just about it. Next thing to happen is that the low-end phones grow in features so, that they start eating the smartphone market.
If the mobile phones gaming would have eaten portable consoles away, it already had happened years ago. And if you noticed, your reasoning why iPhone and Android would eat away Windows Mobile, Ovi and BB is the same why iPhone and Android won't eat away portable consoles.
Then it reaches a point of maturity? The question is when will it reach that point. I believe it is going to take awhile before smartphones and phones with a major operating system (Android, Symbian, ect) mature, as its an emergent technology.
And I certainly agree that other, non-smartphones will gain features to maybe make what we know irrelevant. But guess what? They will still use Android, iTunes, Symbian and the like. That is where the games are. So if you are indeed correct, then it means there will be an even bigger game market. I am not trying to argue smartphones will drive the games as much as I am arguing that the operating systems will provide a central delivery platform for gaming content that will surpass the delivery system of the handheld console. What happens if featurephones (which are in between dumb phones, and smart phones) start running Android and can play decent 2D games? That opens up an install base that is larger than that of handheld consoles by wide margins.
And I am not understanding your argument concerning 'if mobile games would have eaten handheld consoles, then they would have done it a long time ago'. You do not understand the technology behind mobile gaming deployment.
Here's the thing: delivering gaming to cell phones has been a very difficult business, which is why it hasn't become a major business to compete with handheld consoles, until now. Gaming companies have had to develop their products for dozens of phones, each with their own unique operating system, and ways to deploy content (such as through retail websites, market places, or carrier websites). That caused the market to be very, very balkanized - too many phones, OSes and ways to deliver the content to make it a worthwhile market for major devs. That changed when the iPhone came out, as it was one OS, one phone, and one content delivery service. Now, you have the smartphone providers offering centralized market places for millions of phones.
3 years ago, if you wanted a game, any game for your phone, there was a very small chance that you could purchase it. The dev had to of worked with the phone, carrier, and deployed the product to a market place. Now, it is a very quick process which is yielding a much better result. This is like the de-balkanization of the console market when the NES came out - there were many competitors offering one-off technology, and many clones. One company played very strongly into the market with a robust experience, and then the market solidified into a major force.
As for gaming content on the Android and iPhone marketplace, here is why I stated they are a larger force than the other 3:
- Market Share - Android and the iPhone are both growing. Symbian and WinMo are shrinking. This is an absolute fact of the market.
- Market Place - Android and the iPhone have the oldest market places available. iTunes has had games since August 2008, and Android has had it since February 2009 (paid games, mind you). Ovi (Symbian) launched in April 2009, BlackBerry App World in May 2009, and WinMo market in October 2009.
- # of Titles - The iPhone has ~30,000 games on their market which is larger than every other market combined. Android has more games than Ovi, AppWorld and WinMo market do, combined.
- Phone Usage - What kind of people use each type of device? BlackBerries are primarily business-class, so gaming will not become very prominent. Symbian is deployed on a lot of basic Nokia phones which aren't used for app and web browing. AdMob does a lot of research into this, and the fact is that Symbian greatly underperforms vs. every other phone in terms of web usage. WinMo is a good choice (comparatively) for demographics, but they are losing a lot of market share.
And going deeper, I think Android will eventually win the war in 2012-2013 due to form factors - Apple is doing well, but they have thier hands tied behind their back due to one phone, and only on specific carriers. That makes it difficult to really get massive adoption. Android doesn't have this problem, as they can be on virtually any carrier. Heck, Android may wind up being on flip phones next year to deliver featurephone abilities at very cheap prices.
Hopefully this all makes sense.
To sum it up, I make this statement:
What happens when 1 billion mobile phone users can play DS-quality games on their phone? Will that not become an important market vs. the ~130 million DS users?
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
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