The Q2 2005 Canalys device shipment stats show the Symbian OS dominating mobile device sales with shipments of 7.6 million. Of the Symbian sales, the majority were Nokia Series 60 sales. So is Series 60 the platform that will give ISVs the greatest number of software sales?

Not necessarily. Consider that over 160 million JAVA phones were shipped in 2004. So should you be developing for J2ME? Not necessarily.

Take a look at the Handango Yardstick for April 2005 and you will see the top platforms adding software are the Palm OS and UIQ. The Series 60 doesn’t even get mentioned. J2ME seems to be only popular on the Blackberry and Motorola V100.

My own experiences of selling software for J2ME, Pocket PC, Series 60 and UIQ show that shipments are only part of the equation. For 2003 and 2004, UIQ was a very popular platform for adding applications despite the fact that device shipments were very low. I think that people who buy this type of device buy it because they know software can be added. They actively seek out software. Conversely, in the J2ME world, it’s very hard to sell software direct to end users. Most don’t even know their phones can run applications. Most don’t care. I would guess a vast majority of the 4 to 5 million users (in Q4 2004) who purchased Series 60 were more interested in the large screen and camera phone, than adding new software, when they purchased their phone. The only way these people (and JAVA phone users) will buy applications is if they are actively promoted by network operators via their portals.

If you are an ISV selling to end users, don’t get misled by mobile shipments statistics. You might be better working out who you are selling to and how - and then choose the platform.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 8th, 2005 at 3:48 pm and is filed under Symbian, Series 60, Mobile, J2ME, Palm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.