Posts Tagged ‘london’
A great session on Mobile Operating Systems at MoMo last Monday that touched on many different approaches from open source to propriety and from installable apps to browser services.
David Wood from Symbian kicked off with questions on the future of mobile operating systems that sparked many more questions. Is the the user better off installing local apps or browsing web sites? Will mobile devices be sufficiently different to make OSs, and in particular mobile OSs, sufficiently different? What do we mean by a Smartphone? Will Smartphone-like features be moving into even the lowest end of devices? Symbian have shown an impressive climb in sales from 1 million phones in 2002 to 20 million in Q32007 with 165 million phones to date. 70% of Smarthphones sold are now Symbian.
Mark Burks from M:Metrics continued with some mobile market stats which showed the incredible variation in usage between the different geographies:
- 18% of mobile users in Italy are Smartphone users
- 9% of mobile users in the UK are Smartphone users
- 69% of Smartphone users in the UK are male
- 67% of Smartphone users in the UK receive their Smartphone for free
- 9% of Smartphone users in Italy receive their Smartphone for free
- 8% of Smartphone users in the UK are on unlimited data plans
- 8% of Smartphone users in the UK are on unlimited data plans
- 48% of Smartphone users in the US are on unlimited data plans
Next up was David Pollington from Vodafone who came from the browser angle with a “Web Runtime for hosting mobile apps and services”. He introduced MobileScript, developed by VF Group R&D, which extends JavaScript to access device properties and invoke other services – such as make calls and send SMS. More is detailed in his paper on Web Runtimes –evolving beyond the browser which goes into more details in the security concerns that naturally arise.
Karsten Homann from Trolltech finished off the session. Trolltech are soon to be acquired by Nokia to enhance Nokia’s cross-platform ability with Trolltech’s Qt platform. It was nice to see a collection of non-smartphone devices to add some flavour and think about some specialised mobile contexts – with devices that allow NASCAR dads to follow the race from the comfort of their caravan and hand held network analyzers.
I’ll be keeping an eye on Gigaom’s blogs to see how things pan out at MWC and which OSs come out of the week in Barcelona strong.
All the slides from the MoMo evening are available on the MoMo London site.
Mobile OS Links:
I have the dubious pleasure of working in Canary Wharf at the moment, which means I have to endure the Jubilee line from Waterloo station every day. Anyone who has done this trip will, I am sure, share the dreaded moment when you arrive on your overground train and make your way to the Jubilee line, not knowing what the state of the trains will be.
Some mornings you can get to the platform easily, some mornings they have closed most of the barriers and you have to jostle for position in the ticket hall, and some mornings you have to queue on the escalator. Either way, you know that when you actually get to the platform there will be huddles of people near each door waiting for the next, already packed, train to come in so a couple can squeeze on. Some days I have waited for 6 trains to go past before my turn in the sardine can.
In true commuter style, I have discovered a number of alternative routes to be used when the conditions get bad. Most of the time the route is longer, but as long as you are on the move, it seems better.
Now wouldn’t it be good if I knew the state of the trains beforehand – this way I could make my route decision before getting stuck.
Whilst thinking about this I came across what seemed like the answer to my problems on the TfL website. I found I could enter my regular journey details and they would text me in the morning at certain time telling me of any delays. Great – I could finally make my decision. I chose my time and registered for the service, which was nice and simple to do.
Now, they only send a text when there is a problem. So the alloted time passed without incident on the first day and I proceeded to a packed but usable train. Working well so far. Next day was the same. This was good, no more decision making.
On the third day, cracks started to appear in this previously helpful service. My phone beeped as my train was drawing into Waterloo – a text from TfL! It informed me that there were major delays on the Jubilee line. That was it, decision made – I would go the long way. Then, seconds after receiving the text, the guard on the train came on the intercom – ‘We are pleased to announce that there are no delays any of the London Underground lines’.
Oh dear. Who was I to believe? I decided that TfL would know best and went the long way round. Arriving smugly at work I announced that I had avoided the queues. A colleague looked surprised and said he had been there at the same time and had no problems. Hmmm.
The same scenario has since happened a few times, sometimes the guard has been right, sometimes the text has been right. So the system has been rendered useless for giving out information.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have a mobile site where you could check the train times in real time and get information on the train frequency and maybe even a photo of the platform to prove it! These are the sort of areas where mobile phone technology comes into its own – where you need information on the move to enable you to make decisions.
Until this arrives, I continue making a random decision, based mainly on the weather and whether I fancy a walk across the bridge with a coffee or not.