Lee Williams, executive director at Symbian, sits down with GigaOM’s Om Malik, and gets candid — really candid — about Apple and Google:

“Android is building a perfect storm of fragmentation. I don’t view Apple as evil, just greedy. Google … Come on.”

He claims his opinion is informed by his conversations with large carriers who complain that they have to provide Apple App Store apps to iPhone users yet derive no income from them (we’d point out they made money off the data plans — dumb pipes!), and that Google is taking away their customer interface, “cookie-ing” them (tracking their online activities) via proprietary apps obscured in lip service to “openness” and using that to feed their advertising business.

When asked why companies like HTC, if they know Google is “evil”, aren’t investing in Symbian instead, Williams advises Om to “wait and see”, and thinks those manufacturers might be interested in “very open systems.”

While offering no advice to Apple, he does invite Google to join the Symbian foundation so they can have a voice in that open system. Somehow we doubt he’ll see them take up that offer any time soon.

Harsh words for competitors, but also strangely refreshing to see on camera. As to the iPhone, is the carrier beef legitimate? Should they be getting a cut of App Store profits, or should they be happy with the huge increase in data revenue the iPhone is already bringing them?

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Symbian Exec: Google is Fragmented and Evil. Apple, Just Greedy.

Nokia dominates the planet when it comes not only to cellphones, but also to Smartphones. But the upcoming iPhone Risk-style onslaught (not to mention the pending release of Android, though delayed) looks to have them a little worried. So they’re finally getting their Symbian ducks in a row: enough of trying to work together with other companies like Sony and Motorola, they’ve purchased the entire OS shootin’ match and are unifying the platform. Simple explanation: Symbian is the base OS, then there are different interfaces on top of that: S60 and UIQ. We’re not fond of either, but between the two of them S60 seems to be the one with more legs (and more support, it’s Nokia’s interface of choice).

Update: we’ve got more to say here, so make the jump for the analysis.

UIQ is getting folded in to the platform now, basically, and the Symbian foundation is shoring up its base with input from the major players (but Symbian Limited is to be owned by Nokia). What’s more, the platform will be offered for free instead of for a small fee and will even eventually be made ‘open source’ so people can much around with the nasty bits of the code. So basically Nokia is buying it so they can give it away. Confused yet? It’s alright — the bottom line is that in coming years Symbian development will continue apace and now has a decent chance of catching up with the iPhone’s UI elegance. Well, a chance anyway. Interesting that Nokia is betting on a combination of Android-style openness and Apple-style unified look-and-feel.

In case you’re thinking this is a yawner, it’s not. See, the Symbian folks are pumped:

The list of partners who have already committed to the Symbian Foundation is pretty earth-shattering, as well, including AT&T, NTT Docomo, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone in terms of carriers. Handset manufacturers who’ve signed up include LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson. Tech leaders such as Broadcom, Fujitsu, Texas Instruments, and WiPro are also on board. This is an army, more or less.
This is a massive step for the mobile and open source communities, and a big deafening blow to mobile Linux and more importantly – Android. Essentially, the Symbian Foundation is what Google intended Android to be, only it’s already millions of devices strong. The ecosystem is already built, and thriving.

We agree, the target here is Android (and a little Windows Mobile on the side), but that doesn’t mean that the iPhone won’t take some collateral damage. See, the whole point of the is-it-isn’t-it-really iPhone price drop was for them to pick up massive market share so their developer ecosystem could gain a foothold worldwide. If Nokia can get Symbian unified and moving foward quickly, that gambit isn’t going to work so well (outside the US, anyway). Heck, even if Nokia can’t, they’re still by far the dominant player in the industry. Apple really has its work cut out if they want to become synonymous with “smartphone” across the world. Synonymous with smartphone right now: Nokia.

Will Apple sell a ton of iPhones? Yes. However they’re facing as big a beast here in smartphones now as they do on the desktop. Although we don’t think the iPhone will sit around 10% marketshare like the Mac does, we’re not going to hold our breath for more than 30% worldwide marketshare. I’m not, anyway.

The loser here? Could be Motorola. It’s not enough that they’ve lost all their RAZR lovers to the iPhone, but rumor has it the forlorn company is set to make a “last stand” smartphone that was originally supposed to feature, wait-for-it, the soon-to-be-defunct UIQ. Looks like they’ll be reworking that there plan, eh?

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Nokia Unifies Symbian, Sets it Free

According to an article in ComputerWorld, the iPhone handily beat other smartphones (printable version) in almost all of the usability categories. The iphone competed against the HTC Touch (Windows Mobile) and the Nokia N95 (S60 Symbian) in usability tests performed by Texas-based Perceptive Sciences. Their test group was with ten people that had never used any of the three phones, so it’s unfortunately a fairly small sample size. The article title gives the net result away, but read on for the highlights from their test.

The averaged scores show the iPhone’s overall usability dominance:

• iPhone: 4.6 out of 5
• HTC Touch: 3.4 out of 5
• Nokia N95: 3.2 out of 5

The tests are certain to be fodder for various discussion sites, since there is a legion of interesting facts and money quotes from the test (as quoted by Tom Thornton and Tim Ballew, test administrators from Perceptive Sciences. Note that all emphases are added)

• The iPhone deftly won the speed test:

  “Testers were about twice as fast doing specific tasks on the iPhone, which is pretty remarkable.”

• Some members of the test group couldn’t use basic functions of the HTC Touch:

  “That’s pretty basic functionality, but we had people who couldn’t complete a call at all“

• The N95 won in functionality (and the iPhone lost in this section) but its wins came at the cost of usability. The key usability issue for the Nokia?

  “People had a hard time turning it on. Only 30% of our sample group could turn it on right away.”



• The iPhone wasn’t without its gripes, however. The largest one was that the functionality that the iPhone had was basic:

  “It has really basic functionality. For example, the camera functionality is pretty basic. We’re starting to see more third-party apps, but they’re Web-based, and some aren’t very good.”

• The usability test was based on true usability: how user-friendly the device is to use, and how easy it was to learn.

  “People can eventually learn to use any device. But that’s not true usability. We wanted to see how long it took to figure out how to use the phones. That’s the difference between learnability and usability.”

The basic functionality as a win for overall usability has been an Apple trademark for a long, long time. More features doesn’t make for a better device, that’s a cornerstone of good user interfaces.

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iPhone is Usability Champ