Broadcom backs Nokia's S60: another blow to Motorola

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 26 July 2007 07:38

Opinion and Analysis

Two separate developments in the mobile handset industry this week both represent bad news for Motorola's beleaguered cellphone business.

Firstly, a survey of mobile application developers around the world found that Nokia platforms, including the S60, are the ones developers prefer to work with, everywhere that is except North America, where Motorola remains the preferred choice. Secondly, Broadcom, one of the leading developers of chips for mobile devices, announced that would develop versions of its chips specifically to support S60.

The survey, by Evans Data Corporation found that "More wireless developers worldwide plan to support Nokia platforms than any other brand." Overall it found that "the application runtime environment is the dominant factor in target platform selection. This was selected by more than twice as many developers as the next most important factor - operating system."

Evans Data said that "Nokia's established European presence dominates that market and it has now also emerged as the leading target for developers in the Asia-Pacific region." Motorola remains "the most supported brand in North America," but with Nokia growing in popularity in Asia, that could change.

"Nokia has been diligent in using market information to focus on developers, and has put together a world-class developer program with its Forum Nokia organisation," said John Andrews, president and CEO of Evans Data. "This has been crucial in solidifying their developer base in Europe and successfully developing markets in Asia. These results show that their efforts are paying off."

The survey was of 400 developers around the world. It found also that: 64 percent were creating some open source application and half were using location based information, except in Latin America where the figure was only a third.

The survey also found that the application runtime environment was the dominant factor in target platform selection. This was selected by more than twice as many developers as the next most important factor - operating system.

S60 is the Nokia application development environment built on top of the Symbian OS and with a claimed total of 100 million devices shipped (in April 2007) is the world's most popular smartphone platform.