Nick Jones

Is someone about to buy Palm? I don’t have any inside information on the topic, but I certainly do have some opinions. One of the rumours flying around is that Nokia might be a suitor. Would this be a good thing? I don’t think so; maybe a year ago it would have been sensible, but [...]

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I spent several hours roaming around the London Symbian show SEE 2009 yesterday. SEE is a rather unfocussed event, the exhibitors range from companies selling mobile virtualisation and low level touch screen IP through testing tools all the way up to consultancies wanting to build high level applications. SEE really needs to decide whether it’s [...]

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If you’re thinking about developing a customer-facing mobile application running on your favourite platform, maybe iPhone or RIM, I have one question for you. Do you actually know how many of your customers are using that platform?
Looking at the client meetings already scheduled in my diary for Symposium week I see a fair number are [...]

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I’m giving a presentation this week at our London PCC conference where I’ll be talking about the future of mobile work, particularly in the areas of communication and collaboration. One of the things I do when creating such presentations is to take a look at what some of the academics are doing, because a lot [...]

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Several news reports claim that Sony is considering developing some form of hybrid device that will combine gaming and cellular capabilities. If this is Sony’s best idea of how to restore their waning fortunes in the mobile space then they are, IMHO, misguided.
Firstly there is almost no technical hardware difference between high end mobile phones [...]

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Yesterday Nokia and Intel announced they are collaborating (at least a little). The press and analyst call was strong on mutual admiration and broad visions, but weak on concrete deliverables, however there are some implications for Gartner clients, especially those in the vendor space. We’re just tidying up a Gartner first take with some advice for clients [...]

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Two interesting news items that could require action from many Gartner clients.
On the mobile software front Antenna’s rumoured acquisition of Dexterra was officially announced yesterday. This is partly a consequence of economic conditions which are making life harder for some mobile software players, and partly the inevitable consolidation of a market containing too many vendors. [...]

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A few thoughts on events of the week.
The distinction between phones and PCs continues to blur. The Symbian blog reports that ST-Ericsson and ARM demonstrated a port of Symbian to their next generation handset platform. Symbian was running on a multicore ARM Cortex, on a platform with 3D graphics acceleration, support for HD video, multiple [...]

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One of the most important functions of app stores is to discover what mobile users really want to do with the new generation of smartphones. App stores will massively increase the bandwidth of innovation in the mobile space, which up to now has lagged the internet because there was no simple path for developers to [...]

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I’m in Finland meeting clients and as you might expect the subject of mobile platforms and how to develop applications for them is a popular topic of conversation. But what’s also interesting is one of the topics that isn’t being mentioned – Java ME. Interest in ME seems to be declining amongst serious developers and [...]

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