Nokia discontinued Symbian 15-year operating system as swan song

Symbian System was born in 1998, just born in the mobile phone industry, the three major Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia support, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson and other manufacturers have joined. 2000, the world's first Symbian mobile phone Ericsson R380 listed. In the 2006, more than 100 million Symbian handsets were already in the world.

But its luck ends here. 2007, the Apple iphone completely changed the mobile phone industry. Android's entry is a way for many manufacturers to flee Symbian, which is almost the only major manufacturer of Symbian handsets. By the year 2011, Nokia could not hold out, announcing a full shift to Windows Phone and phasing out the Symbian brand. Not so long ago, Nokia announced the shutdown of Symbian handsets, three years earlier than the earlier announcement of the 2016 shutdown. And let the 808 PureView, released last year, become the swan song of the 15-year-old operating system.

What are the factors that led to the collapse of the "Roman Empire" in the mobile phone industry in just 7 years? Where did Symbian fail?

20 million code

Compared with iOS and Android, Symbian today looks old, bulky and unwieldy. But in 1998, this was not the case. Compared to Microsoft, which tried to transplant windows to a mobile phone (which created a later Windows Mobile, which Microsoft had long abandoned), Symbian was designed for mobile devices. In fact, its predecessor, EPOC, is the abbreviation for "Electronic Piece of Cheese", meaning "the use of electronic products is as simple as eating cheese."

However, in the course of the 15 development, Symbian continued to add new features, and the Alliance manufacturers in accordance with their own thinking to operate on Symbian. In the symbian^3 era, its function has been very complete, but the result is that its complexity has been to a heinous extent.

There is a small story to prove: Juhani Risku, a former Nokia executive, Zhu Hanni Riscou a book entitled "New Nokia" (Uusi Nokia) after retiring. When it comes to Symbian, he writes:

"I have a E71 cell phone, and its system is Symbian S60 V3. I noticed that when the phone was locked, a dialog box would pop up and the message would be covered. I asked the researcher: ' Can you shrink this box by 5 millimeters? ' They looked at it and said, ' We can't find the line that can shrink it by 5 millimeters. There are 20 million lines of code on the phone and it is impossible to find it. ’”

Nokia never seems to be looking at the complexity of the system, much less finding a solution. It's just tinkering with the original system, and it's just delaying the problem. After all, to give you a xiali, no matter how modified, can not be converted into a Ferrari, how to catch up with iOS, Android, such as sports cars?

The developer community? Symbian never Owned

Today, both iOS and Android, as well as the catch-up Windows Phone and BlackBerry 10, emphasize the nurturing of the developer community and the construction of the entire application ecosystem. By contrast, Symbian and its main supporter, Nokia, seem to have been less focused on software development.

Two years after the launch of the first Symbian phone, Ericsson R380, many businesses and individuals have been providing Java apps for Symbian, rich in variety, chat software, browsers, games, and more. However, this flourishing situation has not evolved into a vibrant ecosystem, because the mobile Internet was far from forming, Symbian's development team also believe that the mobile phone as long as the basic function is enough, the other is icing on the cake, dispensable.

In this case, Symbian applications can only be used on the PC side of the use of various forums to spread, players daily exchange of ideas and software, although more trouble, but also enjoy themselves. Symbian later developed a "signature certificate" system in 2007. The idea of the system was to improve the security of the phone, but users quickly discovered that it was too much trouble to apply for a certificate, and many people gave up Symbian. It has greatly curbed the development and promotion of Symbian applications.

Developers are also miserable: Symbian has ballooned into a behemoth, and API (Application interface) is also very difficult to use. Simply put, the other platform to implement a function, you can find a corresponding API, and on the Symbian platform, the implementation of a function requires several APIs to use. Someone joked that Symbian was the pain of reducing the bottom developers (who were involved in developing Symbian) and adding to the pain of the top developers (people who developed on Symbian).

If development difficulty can be overcome, then the gloomy business prospects, but also let the developer disheartened. Apple App Store is currently the most successful application ecosystem, behind it is music, video, games, books and so on a complete industrial chain, the development of an application, developers and Apple can make money; in contrast, Symbian vendors in the early stages of development, to the era of Nokia, Also did not pay attention to the cross domain cooperation, the profit chain is impossible to talk about. As a result, developers are diverted to turn to Apple and Google.

So while the Symbian platform's application system started early and had a huge number of excellent software, it never really focused on apps and developers, and didn't form a full-fledged ecosystem.

Bureaucracy Burying Symbian

Without the iphone and Android, the Symbian Empire could still be safe for a while. Despite the flaws in the system itself, the application ecosystem has never really formed, but in the "cell phone = phone + texting + QQ" era, Symbian can still meet the needs of most people.

But in 2007, Jobs used the iphone to tell everyone that mobile phones are not just a means of communication, but a way of life.

Nokia was initially dismissive of the company, which had been busy selling ipods, thinking that Jobs had no knowledge of mobile phones and that the iphone was not a successful product. In the eyes of the giant Finnish giants, the core function of a cell phone is to make a phone call, and all products that do not have the core of telephone function are bullying.

It was not until 2008 that Nokia launched its first touch-screen mobile phone 5800, using a newly designed Symbian S60 V5. People soon found that the phone and the iphone gap is too big. To save costs, 5800 uses a resistive screen rather than a more sensitive capacitive screen, smaller screen size, thicker fuselage, and appalling workmanship. More crucially, 5800 of the system UI is clearly marked with traces of the previous iphone era, many of which do not conform to touch-screen user habits.

On the other hand, Nokia has had to spend more time maintaining its bloated Symbian system than to consider the entire system, as it is still rolling out Symbian's touchscreen machine. Or, Nokia's disciplined corporate culture has made it impossible to make fundamental changes to Symbian.

Nokia has 5,000 developers, 500 of whom are top talent, and often can offer some good ideas, according to the new Nokia book. Unfortunately, because the approval process onerous complex, these ideas often can not be translated into products, but by competitors to preempt. In addition, Nokia is obsessed with data statistics and market research, so that the most common page of its Web site is the user questionnaire. It wants to be able to do so only after ascertaining the needs of users. This clearly imprisons innovation, slowing the pace of research and development.

This reflects Nokia's two main mentality: 1, everything has to go procedure, 2, do not see the rabbit eagle. This is a typical feature of bureaucracy.

The conservative way of thinking eventually ruined Symbian. Nokia released its newly designed symbian^3 in 2010 to support the capacitive screen and optimize the interface, but the iphone and Android phones have been in the ascendant and Symbian is powerless. Discouraged Nokia finally to the Microsoft to throw a hug, to the Windows Phone platform, Symbian became abandoned.

From the fatalism point of view, the reason why Symbian Empire collapsed, the root cause is that it first abandoned the times, and the times have mercilessly abandoned it. After the iphone was born, the mobile phone's content was greatly expanded, no longer just phone calls, texting tools, but to meet the communications, entertainment, social, work and other multiple needs of the mobile Digital Center. Symbian and Nokia have too much emphasis on communication and long overlooked other requirements, the main reason for Symbian's disconnect from The Times.