+ Why is Symbian virtually absent in the United States?

[dusty b]

It depends on the catagory of what kind of phones you are talking about. Now the symbian sony e's are not that numerous as the nokia symbian phones. But if u where to take the total amount of sony E symbian phones and the same number of nokia phones... Nokia will edge out sony in price amount. But NON symbian phones...sony E is the clear winner... Especially since they started making the auto focus 2+ megapixel cameras... Nokia doesnt use auto focus in the non symbians because in my opinion that will raise the premium of the pricing of nokia in general to unreachable highs, that buying a symbian phone will be really hard to obtain if nokia started to put carl zeiss lenses and auto focus in the non symbain phones.

[jonlauman]

I called nokia and a rep told me the n75 will be out late 1st quater.. I dont like HTC products because of the poor quality of phone construction and compnents ( ear/voice volume, reception, ect) and yes HTC makes the 2reo phones ever since the treo 650 i believe... Thats another reason in the laundry list of reasons why i dont do the who windows experience. Sony E and especially nokia arent going to windows no time soon.

[shorrtiee :)]

i never have any memory problem with my e61... well, to be honest, coz i use it sparingly, coz i have a laptop and desktops... but its great when you find yourself in a wifi hotspot, and have a few hours to kill...

WM and palm got lots of apps, undeniable, and s60 lags behind on this... but then, how many can be categorized as killer apps??? how many are really being used in the real life???

most people will use, gps apps+gps device, office suite readers/editors, pdf readers, ebook readers, rss, web browser, PIMS, timers, apps that locks memory, perhaps some dictionary, language translators, weather apps, perhaps kamasutra, and porbably few more.... bottom line, most of the usefull apps that palm, ppc and WM has, s60 has it as well coz no, software company can ignore the s60 crowd, not when it is the most # of smartphones in the world...

i do agree that there are apps that are available with WM/PPC/Palm and are targeting very specific market segments that s60 still does not have anything to offer and might never have any, but then again those are niche market, and represents the very few... cheers!

[Houston TX]

For gaming, S60 owns WM5. There are much better non-java games available for S60v2 then for WM5, and alot more to choose from. S60v3 is catching up too.

[Jaadeen]

Just vented with a CING Cust Service Rep on why they offer no decent Nokia or other Symbian smartphone. EVEN he did not know what Symbian is. Needless to say no news from him on CING offering the N75 [nor of course none on the N95 as well]. I will not buy a PALM, nor MICROSOFT-running phone. Had a MOTO A780 running LINUX but it still lacked the features and upgradeability of a Symbian Smartphone. So I guess I will get a year older carrying my 3650..

[taylorann_xo]

Is that so?

Then there is little profit for the Operating Companies in their 3G data build-out. They build but don't offer phones like they believe in themselves.

There are few among us here that would refuse a high powered phone in trade for a 3G, reasonably $'d, with long-term commitment.

[Beauty Q]

I sympathize with your position. I've been trying WM5 on the Blackjack for the last few days. This has to be one of the most frustrating phones I've ever owned. Weird bugs. Awkwardness in doing very simple things. I've managed to find a little help with some issues by searching on google and from HF, but seriously, the WM5 Smartphone OS comes across as half-finished and Samsung didn't do a very good job engineering the phone in some fundamental ways. I'll probably post a rant later to the rants forum on HF just to vent my frustration with the thing. Love the 3G speed, but I don't really know if I can stand to keep using the thing. I guess many people are willing to put up with marginal design and a buggy OS, for the sake of a small thin phone with Microsoft based software.

PalmOS is pretty much dead. It can only sort-of multitask. Nobody is investing money in it. It was already seriously behind the portable OS technology curve three years ago. Now it is practically an experiment in retro-computing.

Which, for me, leaves Symbian (S60v3, S80) and Blackberry in the desirable category of phone operating systems. Symbian has more functionality and choice between handsets, but perhaps not as much more as people tend to assume. The Blackberry OS has a beautifully designed user interface and is very quick. One place S60v3 clearly wins over Blackberry is on the multimedia front.

The Nokia N75 looks appealing to me except that it is a clamshell phone and lacks a QWERTY keyboard. I expect it is Nokia's attempt to give North Americans what they mostly seem to want. Still, that might be the compromise that I live with.

For now, I'm going to invest a little more time seeing if I can find addons, etc. to make the Blackjack more usable. If not, I guess I'll send it back. I've already ordered a UMTS capable PCMCIA card for tethering on ebay for well under $100 shipped. At least I'll be able to use UMTS for tethering, where it makes a huge difference, and I can have a handset OS that is reliable, easy to use, and has the applications I need (Symbian, or even the BB - they both actually have the applications I really want).

[Ranken]

I have to respectfully disagree. WM5 has the advantage of superior hardware for emulation (there's even a Playstation emulator) and games such as Quake 1/2/3. The library of games available is quite large, as well; PocketGamer is a good place to look. There's even a network-enabled Doom port. I won't deny that there is a good variety of games out for S60v2 and v3, but to say that it "owns" WM5 for gaming is a gross exaggeration at best.

[Catiee babiee]

I'd have to say it's because:Symbian phones (primarily Nokias) are way more expensive than windows devices which, up until 2006, were primarily manufacturered by smaller and/or cheaper companies that often went white label for the carrier in desperate acts to get market exposure (ie. Audiovox? HTC?) Can anyone see Symbian going white label?North America's obsession with cheapness: When Nokia released flip phones like the 6170(b) and 7270(b...yes there was a 'B' version prototype presented) the carriers balked and passed in favour of cheaper devices: Motorolas. Why do you think all our Nokia's are made in some third world country whereas European Nokia's are always made in Europe with few exceptions (majority of 6620's were from Finland though latter batches were made in Brazil/Mexico)cosmetics: frankly, Symbian phones, up until the E50, were disgustingly big and ugly. North Americans proved that they prefer style over functionality by the RAZR craze and Nokia just didn't get it...Nokia USA/Canada's marketing arm blows....Nokia doesn't seem to care about North America. They're withdrawal from CDMA is testament of that. Regardless of whether it's a dead-end technology or not, it is important to get your brand out there whenever/wherever possible. It's not even like they're doing any better on NA GSM.....

[get over it]

Adding to the views of other posters, IMO it is also that Nokia is concentrating on the very fast growing markets of asia (china/india), and US with its operator driven model simply cannot keep pace with the new models flowing out of nokia.