I just listened to the interview of Debi Jones (a.k.a. Mobile Jones) at Voice of S60. Insightful stuff.

About S60 blogs, and Nokia blogging in general, Debi gave us plenty of good advice:

"In terms of looking at S60 blogs and how they are uniquely positioned to offer content to the rest of us, is taking an insider view"

"In watching for example what Robert Scoble did: he was a guy who was evangelizing some things that were coming out from Microsoft, but also, pulling the audience in and making them feel like they understood what it meant to be at Microsoft. He introduced to us a lot of people who were working there, and talked about the kinds of projects they were doing, and then also Microsoft went a step further, in terms of making their blogging capability available to just almost everybody in the company."

Yep. I can evangelize about the applications my unit is developing, Jukka/Oren about S60 Multimedia applications, Ari about Nokia's Linux development, and HeGe about WidSets. But I guess we still have some gaps in our blogging coverage... However, I don't think we need everybody in Nokia to start writing blogs. I guess 1% (=500 people) will do just fine. Bonus link: What is the 1% rule?

About the "what it means to work for Nokia" part, I'm afraid we are not there yet. Phil is doing great work with Voice of S60, but we don't have much more than that. However, I guess there is demand, since many people have asked me via email about how I like working for Nokia, and how they could possibly apply for jobs here. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to help them much - in most cases I've just redirected them to http://www.nokia.com/careers. I wonder how I could do more.

"I know that the recruiting blogs were extremely popular. Or I should say, are extremely popular. Because the recruiters would actually give you some information like what is it like to interview at Microsoft, what are the qualities of people that we would like to have as employees, what is important to Microsoft. And so, it kind of demystified a lot of things about the company, definitely put a more human face on the company, so that you felt like it's not the big monolithic thing behind the curtain that only the people inside understand."

Couldn't agree more. In fact, I pitched this "recruiting blog" idea to some Nokia HR people six months ago, and they seemed to like it. I'll ask them again...

We seem to have a new S60 widget thing in town: Mobidgets, currently looking for alpha testers at http://mobidgets.com/.

TomSoft says:

Mobidgets is a widgets engine for mobile phone. I will not describe all the features here, first because they are not yet frozen, but also to keep some excitement. I will do it in a later post. But Mobidgets is looking for alpha testers, people who are interested in creating widgets for mobile phones. So, to join the program, we prefer you to be a developer but there’s no need to be an expert! The only constraint is to have a Symbian S60 device 2nd Ed FP2 or FP3.

SymCity says:

I really like the sound (and look) of this… mobidget (mobile widgets) for S60 2nd ED devices. Still in closed alpha but hopefully coming to my pocket soon.

Mobidgets seems to be S60 specific, while WidSets works also in many Java enabled phones. Anyway, I guess it will be interesting to compare these two in the near future.

Antony at S60Tips.com: Synchronizing Music Files and PodCasts From iTunes to S60 Phones
Follow-up by Phil at See Into S60: Synching iTunes with your S60 device: It's easy!

Nice.

Last week, I speculated about the long tail of S60 applications.

But let's not get too excited: it seems that the long tail is not good for everyone.

The long tail phenomenon is extremely important for aggregators such as Handango, My-Symbian, Nokia Content Discoverer, iTunes, Amazon.com, or eBay. They can make a load of money from the long tail, if they implement it right.

Also, the phenomenon is good for the end-users. They'll find more and better stuff related to the weird little things they care about.

But if you are an application developer, you can't make much money in the long tail, unless you are in a lucrative niche with a high price tag (see for example Digia ImageExpo)

So watch out the "pile of bodies" section, my friend, it could be a scary place.

In a recent e-mail exchange, Francesco Aliverti-Piuri, the managing partner of Somusar, sent me an idea:

...allow developers to test their apps on different S60 devices at Nokia local premises. It's great to see that many great new devices become available, but that makes it impossible to ensure that quality of user experience will be positive on all of them. Simple example: different screen resolutions.

We asked Nokia Italy whether it's possible to test apps on their devices in their offices, but currently it is not possible. Note that this is a fairly common practice in the traditional IT world: OEMs like IBM or HP or Sun encourage ISVs to test their apps in the OEMs' porting labs. Simply put, ISVs could reserve a day of free testing in a lab at Nokia, bringing in their laptops, software and SIM cards.

Uh, that is a good point. Based on anecdotal evidence, I think most application developers have currently no chance testing their applications on different S60 devices - it is just too expensive.

So should Nokia set up application testing labs, as Francesco is proposing? I have no idea could this be feasible or not, and I don't even know whom I should pitch this idea to. But what do you think?

ps. please comment - I'll promise to pitch this idea to some higher-level managers at Forum Nokia, by sending the link to this post

pps. I have started to wander waaaay off my official job tasks. My sincere apologies if I'm proposing something stupid or stepping on somebody's toes...

Quick note to our S60 browser team: please enable saving passwords and web pages.

...if you haven't done this already :-)

(this was the unequivocal feedback to my last post about the browser)

Sirul asked me to comment the problem published on Antony’s Mobile Blog: Symbian Signed and Software Bug Fix.

In short, the problem is this. Some applications require Symbian Signed service, since they use the “protected” functions of the device. So far so good. But each time you want to release a bug fix or some other minor release, you have to go through the Symbian signing process again. Naturally, this requires time / money / effort, which eventually discourages the developer from releasing bug fixes.

Urgh.

Yep, this isn't directly related to my work, but I think the issue is really important. However, I don't have a solution or workaround to this problem. Indeed, I asked the same question a couple of months ago from some of my colleagues during lunch, but they couldn't figure out a solution. It seems we might have a problem.

Thoughts, anybody?

Here's a very interesting post from Michael Mace: Why are mobile application sales dropping?, followed by a long - but even more intresting - follow-up discussion.

Well worth a read.

(via Ivan Kuznetsov)

ps. in the follow-up discussion, many people wanted the platform vendor (Microsoft / Palm OS / S60) to provide a "full software store built into every device". Hmm... I wonder how we could utilize Nokia Catalogs the best way?

Mobileburn says in their Nokia E61 review:

The E61's most impressive application, by far, has to be Nokia's new web browser. This beautiful application renders websites the way they were meant to be seen.
...
But while it doesn't save the zoom setting, there is a way to access the zooming (and other) functions quickly. The keypad. Pressing the # and * keys will quickly zoom the browser, 2 will let you search on the page (showing hits as you type, much like Mozilla and FireFox do), and 8 will bring up a full page overview so you can quickly see the part of the page you need. There are others, too. In any event, the web browser is nothing short of mind blowing for a mobile phone.

Oh, I didn't know these tricks (shame on me). Thanks!

Something small for today.

Have you be annoyed by your display backlight turning off automatically, while you are browsing or showing your pictures to your friends? I have. So I felt relieved when I came across today with S60SpotOn, a small freeware app that keeps your display backlight tuned on, while the device is active.

First, I thought "why on earth we don't have this built-in?" But then I realized that actually, we do. Just go to Settings => Phone => Display => Light time-out, and set it to maximum = 60 seconds. And abracadabra, the small nuisance is gone.

During the last year, one of the biggest complaints among S60 application developers (and some end-users) has been the backwards compatibility of S60 3rd Edition, or the lack of it. Because of the binary break, the thousands of old Series 60 applications, except for Java midlets, don't run on new S60 3rd Edition devices - at least without some tweaking and recompiling by the developers.

So strictly speaking, we (Symbian+Nokia) broke the platform. But thinking about it, was it such a big deal?

I would say that we did the right thing:
- keeping the binary compatibility would have required lots of compromises, making S60 3rd Edition less competitive
- since the S60 sales volumes are growing so fast, the backwards compatibility with older S60 devices will become increasingly irrelevant

Due to confidentiality, I can't share you S60 sales statistics. But if you take a look at Canalys global smart mobile device research reports (here, here, here, and here), Nokia's quarterly and annual releases, and the evolution of S60 device range, you'll get the picture: the S60 platform volumes have grown by an order of magnitude in each edition (1st, 2nd, 3rd).

Q: Are you suggesting that we don't need to take care of backwards compatibility, if the sales volumes are growing so fast?

A: Absolutely not. All I'm saying is that thanks to growing volumes, we might be forgiven this time. But now it is the time to start taking really good care of S60 backwards compatibility. Amen.

Bonus links:
- Antony’s Mobile Blog: Binary Compatibility - Is It Really Important?
- The Register: Is that a PC in your pocket?

What do you think?

Quick note: if you don't have a proper file manager application, now it is a good time to go and get one.

For S60 3rd edition:
- All About Symbian: It's raining 3rd Edition file managers!
- Symbian Freak: Y-Browser; First file manager for 3rd ed with full system access!! (technically speaking, it doesn't have full system access - you can't access the files on restricted folders)

For S60 2nd edition (older S60 devices), I still recommend FExplorer. The developer Dominique Hugo says:

I have just received my N80 !!! I can now start the dev of FExplorer for the 3rd edition !!!!

Cool. We'll be waiting...

On October 2004, Chris Anderson - the Chief Editor of Wired Magazine - wrote his famous article The Long Tail, in which he urged people to forget the megahits, and to focus on "the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream". The article was clearly a homerun: it first sparked the Long Tail blog, a speech-tour for Chris Anderson (I heard him speak at Nokia house in Jan 2005), and eventually a bestseller book (today selling in Amazon.com with Sales Rank #11).

But wait... What on earth has this to do with S60 applications?

Probably a great deal. But since I wasn't sure, I decided to do some research. According to this page, people have downloaded 26.1 million S60 applications through My-Symbian.com. Of these 26.1 million downloads, the top-10 most popular applications accounted for 4 million = 15%.

Interesting... It seems that 85% of My-Symbian.com downloads comes from the long tail (= outside top-10).

Since I don't have any better download/sales figures about S60 applications, I can't investigate any further. But here is a question for My-Symbian, All About Symbian, Handango, SymbianOne, SymbianGear, and others: what proportion of your S60 application downloads/sales comes from the "long tail"? Let's define the "long tail" here as the applications not in the top-20. I fully understand if you don't want to share the download statistics, but I'm sure many people in the S60 ecosystem would appreciate the info.

I believe "the long tail of S60 applications" is a timely topic worth thinking about, especially as Flash Lite based mini games and other kinds of "mobile snacks" are starting to pop up with increasing pace.

What do you think? Is the "long tail of S60 applications" mode viable? How could we make the life easier for the "long tail" developers?

(big thanks for Oren for the idea behind this blog post)

All About Symbian fellows Rafe Blandford and Steve Litchfield wrote yesterday a really interesting article, which also sparked an interesting follow-up discussion.

In the end, Rafe asks an excellent question: "who does a platform benefit?" and states his own conclusion:

"In other words, the platform - for the mass market - (Symbian OS + S60/UIQ) is more for the operator and the manufacturer than it is for the end user."

Interesting thought, but I have to disagree. I would put it as: the platform is more for the operator and the manufacturer and the enterprise IT managers and the "Internet companies" and the end-user, than it is for stand-alone 3rd party application developer, who is trying to make money from stand-alone application sales.

At least, I believe this is the case today. But could the situation be changing?

I believe it could. Last May, I interviewed dozens of sales people from Finnish mobile phone retail shops, and spent a day in a mobile phone retail shop Airfoto myself. Among other things, I learned that people typically don't walk into a shop to buy a "S60 device", but many people ask for a "phone that works with Navicore GPS navigator software". Could this be an early indicator that the tides are changing? You tell me.

Worth checking out: http://jaiku.com/

Unfortunately, I couldn't test this myself, since I don't have S60 2nd edition devices at hand any more... If you are able to test it, send your feedback directly to the developers through the Jaikido blog or via email to bugs [at] jaiku.com.

Via ButtUgly

Steve Litchfield says in Allaboutsymbian:

"In summary then, switching over to S60 3rd Edition is very practical if you're mainly business/productivity focussed. Games fans and will have to wait a few more months, I'm afraid, especially as Nokia's next-gen gaming platform is just round the corner as well."

Check out the full article - there is a good link list of recommended applications for S60 3rd Edition.

Let me introduce the latest - highly recommended - blogs that I've found and added to my RSS reader:

The Pondering Primate by Scott P Schaffer
- Very insightful blog about "tsunami of opportunities" that will be created when "Internet becomes mobile through the cell phone". In particular, I like the Barcode, RFID, and Search related articles, since I believe these will be big in the near future, and since I know many of the key Nokia people behind our activities in these areas...

Mika Raento’s blog - Symbian, CS research and angst
- If I understood correctly, Mika is the main man behind the very interesting free S60 application Merkitys-Meaning, which unfortunately isn't available for S60 3rd Edition yet. Mika's blog has some insightful rants about Symbian/S60 development, and I too recommend that people who care about Symbian/S60 as development platform should read them (thanks Teemu K for the link).

E-Series - A blog dedicated to the Nokia E-series devices - Nokia E61, E60, E70 and E50
- I have no idea who is writing this, but I'm sure this is a valuable resource for all E-series owners.

Creating Carbide C++
- Our new addition for S60.com blogs - written by Markus Ahonen, a really cool guy and a friend of mine from the days when we were studying in Helsinki University of Technology. I'm sure many S60 developers will find this blog valuable. Welcome Markus to the club!!

I have heard hundreds of good ideas for mobile applications/services that, at the end of the day, never fly. The people who pitch these, are often (though not always) very smart and they think big.

So why do their ideas/technologies/applications/services fail?

Yesterday, I read a ChangeThis Manifesto by Pip Coburn called Non-Geeks are Not Morons: The Change Function Model for Adopting Technology. I liked the whole manifesto, but what really struck a chord with me, was this side note which explains the failure of so many initiatives:

"Without getting the initial 2% of market penetration, we can't get to 10% or 25%"

Simple, but so true.

When you are creating an application/service to conquer the world, make sure it is attractive for its users also with 0-2% market penetration.

Of course, it doesn't harm if your app/service gets better for it's users as more people use it (Web 2.0 principles, Metcalfe's law, etc, etc). But that's another story...

Have you heard about the Apple Mac hackers who turned Mac into a jedi weapon, using the built-in motion sensor?

Well, Forum Nokia has released the 3D accelerometer (Sensor) API for S60 3rd Edition SDK intended for utilizing the built-in 3D accelerometer sensor on Nokia 5500 Sport.

The question is: who will be the first one to turn Nokia 5500 Sport into a light saber, with all the sound effects? :-)

(Yes, I know Nokia 5500 Sport is not in the shops yet, but I have a gut feeling it will be quite soon...)

Ho-ho-ho! Tommi has returned back to office and blogosphere. My summer vacation and honeymoon with Katja is now over. Darn, I loved it. Darn, I wish I could live it again... (*sigh*)

Anyway, welcome back!

Now that I've managed to clean up half of my email inbox and RSS feeds, it seems that lots of things have happened while I was away, including:
- S60 sales volumes keep rising - e.g. Nokia 3250 alone has sold already more than 1 million
- Python for S60 3rd Edition
- Interesting beta releases from Nokia: Podcasting client and WidSets
- Quite a many good apps have become available for S60 3rd Edition. All you S60 3rd Edition owners: I strongly recommend subscribing to My-Symbian RSS feed dedicated to S60 3rd Edition.
- New interesting blogs such as E-Series blog have emerged

Once again, welcome back!