Canalys’ report on the latest smart phone sales – with my comments

Menneisyys · 10-26-06, 07:53 AM

As is reported in Tero Lehto’s mobility-related blog, Canalys has just published a report on the market share of mobile / smart phone manufacturers.

The figures (Windows Mobile has lost some 1.1% and now stays at 16.9%) are pretty interesting an, unfortunately, back up what I’ve been complaining about for a long time (see for example this and this): HTC, the most important Windows Mobile-based smartphone manufacturer (it’s HTC’s products that most rebranders / operators sell under their names) just refuses to include enhanced multimedia capabilities (for example, digital TV receivers) in their phones. That is, features that would really appeal to ordinary mobile phone users. It’s only some of their latest, just-released Smartphone models that they bothered to include FM radios – something the competing dumb / smart phone manufacturers like Nokia, Sony-Ericsson etc. have already had for more than five years. And I haven’t even mentioned TV receivers or anything similar. See the difference?

Only less-known and, what is even worse, only-in-the-Pacific-sold Pocket PC Phone Edition manufacturers like Gigabyte (see for example this thread on their latest model) include really cool multimedia features like digital TV receivers in their phones. Unfortunately, that's the only way to have digital TV on the Windows Mobile platform as the really usable DVB SDIO cards (see this article) are still not released. HTC? They don’t seem to bother. (ASUSTeK, the third independent hardware manufacturer, manufacturing for example the Fujitsu-Siemens T800/T830, doesn’t include any advanced multimedia features in their phones either.)

And I haven’t mentioned seamless (see this article for more info) phone call recording capabilities either. This has always been possible with even “dumb” (let alone Symbian-based – or, for that matter, the Palm OS-based Treo 650) phones of Nokia, Siemens and Sony-Ericsson in the last five years (with Sony-Ericsson, starting with the 2002 model t68).

HTC, when will we see hardware support for call recording in all your Windows Mobile models? Never, I bet. And don’t come telling me it’s not included because it might be illegal to record calls in some states / countries. Nokia, S-E, (the Windows Mobile-based) Gigabyte and the rest all have call recording capabilities. If they are allowed to manufacture phones with call recording capabilities, why isn't HTC?

If only Nokia or Sony-Ericsson manufactured Windows Mobile-based phones and not (just) Symbian-based ones... Just imagine the Nokia N95 (of which, Tero Lehto has just published another “quick test in 4.2 minutes” article; he’s pretty happy with the new model. Upon specific request, I translate the Finnish article into English.) running Windows Mobile! It would be a killer device, putting all current HTC models into shame, hardware feature-wise, I’d say.

Verdict

To change this trend, HTC should include in their phones what “ordinary” users want: advanced multimedia and call recording capabilities.