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Ignoring the opposition: Palm? Symbian? Who they!

Two interesting viewpoints on the mobile phone industry last week. One from In-Stat, which appears not to have heard about Symbian; and one from Silicon, which appears to have forgotten Palm.

The In-Stat report was described tersely as "ridiculous" by Symbian pundit  Steve Litchfield. The company earned his scorn when it publicised its $3,000-odd report by quoting Bill Hughes, In-Stat analyst:

“The winners will be Microsoft and Linux. Their growth will be at the expense of Research In Motion (RIM) and PalmSource, although these organisations will continue to see their numbers grow.” And what about Symbian? Just the market leader! Oh, well. At least Hughes didn't say that the growth of Microsoft would be at the expense of Symbian.

Over at Silicon, an interesting interview with Symbian VP of product management and strategy, Jørgen Behrens, analyses the threats as being Microsoft, Linux and, primarily, the handset makers with their own operating software.

Reporter Jo Best says: "In the future, Symbian will be concentrating its efforts, not on defeating Linux or Microsoft, but rather on wooing handset makers away from their proprietary software and spreading the Symbian operating system down towards the lower end of their handset ranges."

With handset makers traditionally risk averse to such moves, says Best, Symbian is working on trimming the costs associated with its operating system including reducing the amount of memory the OS uses and delivering reference designs with semiconductor companies, as well as "investing heavily" in improving documentation and tooling to charm developers.

But not a single mention of the Treo platform, from either party in the interview...

 Tags: Palm, Symbian, mobile phone