Three weeks ago – three long weeks ago – I attended a small gathering of developers and bloggers in a private room at the Viognier restaurant in San Mateo, California. The event was organised by Symbian personnel from the nearby office in Foster City, as a chance to share views about the issues and opportunities facing mobile developers. Two representatives from the Symbian Leadership Team attended: Ted Shelton (interim head of marketing) and myself.
The attendees all came with a wealth of experience. The discussion was wide-ranging and, at times, pretty challenging. Ted and I got a lot to think about. Two of the attendees subsequently wrote up some of the thoughts they took away from the event: Joel West of San Jose State University, and Michael Mace of Rubicon Consulting.
Out of a whole host of interesting paragraphs in these two summaries, I’d like to comment on a point made by Michael Mace:
The question is whether anyone cares about [Symbian being properly and thoroughly open]. Although the details of open source governance are intensely important to the community of free software advocates, I think that for most developers and handset companies the only “open” that they care about translates as, “open to me making a lot of money without someone else getting in the way.” Thus the success of the Apple Store, even though Apple is one of the most proprietary companies in computing. Symbian’s measure of success with developers will be whether it can help them get rich…
To restate this question:
- Isn’t the most pressing task for Symbian to create something that emulates Apple’s AppStore?
- From this point of view, isn’t pursuit of open source, open governance, and open research (etc) just a distraction?
One answer is to point out that, whilst Apple’s AppStore has transformed the mobile industry, things are far from perfect there. As Information Week reported, “Apple iPhone Developers Mostly Don’t Make Much Money“. There’s even bubbling hostility from iPhone developers.
But a fuller answer is that Symbian is interested in building a solution, not just for the next five months or so (until whatever new wonder appears), but for at least the next five years. Our passionate interest in both open source and open governance stems from a belief that these are critical ingredients of a sustainable innovation engine. Couple the historic strengths of the Symbian platform with the radical improvements in both system and ecosystem that open source and open governance will enable, and we’re looking at a very attractive medium-term and long-term proposition.
Yes, we’re keen to highlight developers and partners who are earning impressive profits from their Symbian projects. We’ll make a step in that direction at SEE ‘09 (Symbian Exchange and Exposition, 27-28 October).
To be clear, we’re not building our own app store (in spite of what has been written in places). Instead, as CNET explains,
the company has no plans for its own app store, but … plans to make it easier for developers to negotiate with several stores.
the foundation wants to serve the same role a book publisher does: provide intermediary services between application developers and the wireless carriers. Such a strategy not only gives Symbian more devices to play on, but it also makes it a valuable partner to more wireless carriers than Apple can be.
In other words, we expect that our pursuit of open source and open governance will open up great opportunities for individuals and companies in all parts of the evolving mobile value chain:
- Opportunities to earn significant profits;
- Opportunies to become absorbed in technically fulfilling work;
- Opportunities to create products that substantially enhance and augment the functionality of devices and networks – products which will have profound beneficial impacts on consumers, business, and society.
The core point is that, in the end, the best solutions to deeply challenging problems will be those that arise from thoroughly engaging and stimulating wide numbers of people from very different points of view. That’s a mode of operation which open source and open governance, done right, can trigger. And that’s why it’s worth taking the time to get the open source and open governance right.
Let’s face it, developers are like any other professionals. They want to make a profit out of their work. This is not unethical or inherently bad. Increasing the money earned from a mobile application or game presses developers to compete and improve, providing better products for the end customers and community.
The problem is different, in my humble opinion. Developers simply don’t know what they can really do with Symbian and its many languages and programming paradigms, especially in the US. They have been mesmerized by Apple’s [admitedly] great marketing campaign and by following economics of scale they now want to stick to the supposed 50000+ applications of the iPhone Store.
Symbian should not follow Apple in their game. I agree with you that sooner or later the merits of an open source approach (à la Android) will become evident, especially if universities and researchers embrace it.
Nevertheless, Symbian Foundation should do everything in its hands to promote and showcase the power of its OS. More hackathons, more tutorials, more dedicated portals and competitions for each aspect of the Symbian framework.
And here’s the kicker: why not a proactive campaign to port the best iPhone applications to Symbian?
From the 50000+ applications that Apple boasts to possess only a hundred or so are really worthy. The rest is bloat or simply stupid. A pragmatic approach to promote Symbian’s capabilities would be for Symbian Foundation marketing guys to download iTunes, see the best paid and free applications in every category and contact the respective developers to help them with the porting of their applications in the Symbian ecosystem. Even subsidizing them if it is necessary.
I know that it might sound like a cheat, but it’s not. It’s pragmatic and effective. I know of iPhone users that won’t give away their devices simply because of their favorite apps that won’t find anywhere else. Let’s change that. An iPhone without its best exclusive apps is a very mediocre device. Symbian lacks in the apps department, although its hardware capabilities are first class.
Remember: smartphones become really SMART when they have many interesting applications. Otherwise they are dumb as your average mobile phone…
From both a user’s and a developer’s perspective, it doesn’t feel like the benefits of Symbian’s approach here come close to outweighing the costs in this particular flexibility versus simplicity trade-off.
All this does is add the complexity necessary to pander to the customer/developer ownership demands of certain operators and phone manufacturers. If I’m being sold on the benefits of a platform, I would much prefer to be able to publish to and buy from a full-coverage, platform-centric store that is both operator and manufacturer independent. Between the open source platforms, the Android Market is the simpler and more compelling story.
As for reports of bubbling hostility amongst the iPhone crowd, if the numbers are indeed limited then it’ll be interesting to see the reaction of developers whose apps don’t quite make the cut for Symbian’s “publishing” deal and are set adrift in a sea of fragmented app stores.
i agree with kensai