Wiley.Games.on.Symbian.OS.A.Handbook.for.Mobile.Development.Apr.2008 (779888), страница 5
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This book discusses how to write mobile games specificallyto take advantage of the capabilities of Symbian smartphones – but whatdoes that mean in practice?Symbian defines a smartphone as:‘a mobile phone that uses an operating system based on industry standards,designed for the requirements of advanced mobile telephony communication on 2.5G networks or above.’The combination of such a powerful software platform with mobile telephony enables the introduction of advanced data services and innovationby device creators. It also allows the user to personalize the phone byinstallation of a wide range of applications, which in turn opens upthe market for an entire industry of mobile software developers (suchas game developers).
A user can transform a smartphone into a uniqueand personal tool to suit their requirements. It may become a businessproductivity tool (with Push email, an office suite and even applicationsWHAT IS SYMBIAN? WHAT IS SYMBIAN OS?5written by them to be specific to their business) in one person’s hands.The same phone may alternatively be a mobile entertainment device(for games, videos, mobile TV or music) or an in-car navigation system,depending on the user’s lifestyle.Nokia often refers to their Nseries S60 devices as ‘Multimedia Computers’ because they offer the functionality of a PC combined with thosesupplied by many portable single-purpose devices.
For example, Nseriesdevices (and other Symbian smartphones) may include features such asWLAN, email, high-quality (5 megapixel) cameras, video capture andplayback, mobile TV and music players with storage of up to 8 GB. Otherfunctionality offered by Symbian smartphones may include GPS, visualradio, Bluetooth and USB local connectivity, accelerometer, Java, Weband WAP, MMS, SMS and, of course, telephony (voice and 3G data).Symbian smartphones come with a range of embedded applications suchas calendar, address book, photo viewers (and editors), music players,messaging (SMS, MMS, email), web browser, converters, sound recorderand many others. Most also have at least one built-in game.Symbian smartphones are frequently known as ‘convergence devices’because the smartphone can take on the role of other single-purposedevices, rather like a Swiss army knife, and it removes the need to carryaround more than one gadget.
It may seem amazing, but the largest digitalcamera manufacturer in the world is Nokia6 because of the number ofcamera phones it sells annually. Besides cameras, smartphones can nowtake the role of alarm clocks, calculators, pagers, game consoles, musicplayers, portable radios, video cameras, pedometers, dictaphones, andsatellite navigation units. This is, of course, in addition to being a phone,and supplying messaging, email, and web browsing!1.2.2 Smartphones and Feature PhonesA smartphone must be contrasted with a ‘feature phone’ which is a termcommonly used to describe a low-end or mid-range mass market mobilephone which does not have such advanced functionality as a smartphonehandset. A feature phone may offer a subset of the functionality of asmartphone, but is typically far more basic, with voice and messagingbeing the main features of the phone.
Feature phone handsets are typically smaller, and since they have fewer features, need fewer electroniccomponents; those used are frequently less technologically advanced.As a result, feature phones are cheaper to manufacture and to sell tothe consumer; they are thus sold in significantly higher volumes (as thestatistics in following section reveal).6In 2006, Nokia was the world’s largest digital camera manufacturer with approximately140 million cameras sold through sales of Nokia smartphones and feature phones. It also soldclose to 70 million music enabled devices, making Nokia the world’s largest manufacturerof music devices as well. (Source: www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1096865).6INTRODUCTIONA feature phone does not allow for more than very basic personalization by the user through ringtones and themes or skins.
Beyond these,only certain types of applications can be installed by the user, thosethat are sandboxed, typically written in Java ME. In consequence, thephones are said to be closed. Other restrictions may be in place, such aspreventing access to web or WAP sites beyond those preconfigured bythe vendor, or limiting the user’s access to the phone’s file system.In contrast, the Symbian OS-based S60 and UIQ smartphone platformsare open because a user may install native applications written in C orC++, such as high-performance games, as well as applications written inJava ME.So, besides more advanced technology found in a smartphone, oneof the key differences between Symbian smartphones and feature phonesis the ability to install native C++ applications.
However, it’s not quiteas clear cut as this. One of the Symbian OS smartphone platforms,found in Japan, is also closed; it is not possible to install after-marketsoftware written in C++ on FOMA phones. For this reason, the FOMAsmartphone platform will not be considered in the early chapters of thisbook where writing games in C++ using the native APIs and servicesare discussed. Those chapters are limited to S60 3rd Edition and UIQ3. Since FOMA phones do allow games written in Java to be installed,Chapter 10 discusses writing games specifically for them using the DoJastandards, as well as discussing the Japanese game market. Chapter 9 ismore general, and discusses how to write Java ME games for UIQ andS60 smartphones.1.3 Some Statistics1.3.1 Smartphones in ContextAccording to analysts at IDC, 528.3 million mobile phones shippedworldwide in the first half 2007.
Of these, Canalys reports 47.9 millionwere smartphones. So it’s clear that smartphones are only a small fraction(9 %) of all mobile phone handsets purchased. Having said that, salesof smartphones in the first half of 2007 were up by 39 %, compared tothe same period in 2006. This can be contrasted with the more shallowrise of 17 % increased sales of all mobile phones over that time. (Thecontinued momentum in mobile phone sales is driven by increasedpurchasing in emerging markets such as India and Africa, and purchasersin industrialized nations upgrading their current phones to the latestmodels).Canalys forecasts that cumulative global shipments of smartphoneswill pass the one billion mark by 2012, while other analysts are lessSOME STATISTICS7H1 2007 smartphone shares by OS vendor, by region100%SymbianLinuxAccessMicrosoftRIMAppleOthers80%60%40%20%0%EMEAJapanChina N.Am.
ROW 100%Symbian smartphone global shipments and market share100%90%80%70%60%50%40%30%20%10%0%Q306Q406Q106Q207Figure 1.2 Smartphone market shares by regioncautious, and predict sales to break through one billion in 2011 (IDC) orin 2010. (Yankee Group).7At the time of writing, as section 1.2 described, Symbian smartphonesare reported to have a 72 % global market share. Regionally, the marketshare in China is reported to be 61 % (Q2, 2007 – Canalys figures) and,in Japan, the same research reports a Symbian smartphone market shareof 72 %.
Figure 1.2 reflects the market share, as reported by Canalys, atthe time of writing (October 2007).In February 2006, a Symbian press release announced a new pricingmodel for Symbian OS, designed to enable its licensees to target segmentsof the market for lower-cost devices, and further increase the salesvolumes of Symbian OS phones. The scaleable pricing model reducesthe price paid to Symbian per unit as the licensee’s total volume ofshipments increase. Using this model, Symbian OS royalties as low as$2.50 per unit are possible, reducing the cost of using Symbian OS in7The Yankee group also predicts that smartphone sales will be 20 % of all mobile phonesales by 2010.8INTRODUCTIONlower-price phones, and further accelerating the uptake of Symbian OSin the high-volume mass-market segment.At the same time, Symbian also announced a collaboration withFreescale and Nokia to produce a 3G mobile phone reference design forS60 using a single core 3G chip.
This reference design is expected toprovide handset manufacturers with a cost-effective means of addressingthe mid-tier 3G market segment and to reduce device development timeby up to 50 percent.Put together, the result is that Symbian OS can now be used todrive cheaper, mass-market phones as well as high-end smartphones.This effectively opens the possibility of deploying Symbian OS games toincreasing numbers of consumers and leads to an interesting conclusionfor mobile game developers: the addressable market for mobile gameswritten for the Symbian platform is dramatically increasing in size.‘‘Yankee believes the primary growth driver for smartphones is theeconomic benefit to manufacturers and operators associated with standardized, scalable software architectures.
. .Vendors and operators willenjoy rapid time to market at low cost with services and devices thatspan the entirety of the market, from basic phones to ultra-high multimedia centric models,’’ said John Jackson, Vice President, EnablingTechnologies Research, Yankee Group, 2007.1.3.2 Sales of Smartphones vs. Sales of Portable Game PlayersLet’s take a look at some more statistics by comparing sales of Symbian smartphones with sales of comparable portable game players fromNintendo and Sony. As of 30th June 2007, Symbian reported 145 millioncumulative smartphone shipments by its licensees.
In the first six monthsof 2007 alone, 34.6 million units were shipped (a 44 % increase on thesame period for the previous year and more than for the whole of 2005).Comparatively, Nintendo has published sales figures of 1.25 millionDS portable game players in the first three months of 2007 (comparedto 15.9 million Symbian smartphones over the same period), and over47 million cumulatively since the DS launched. Sales of the NintendoWii since its release in 2006 were said to be just over 9 million units.Sony reports cumulative sales of its PlayStation Portable (PSP) to be25.39 million units since its launch in 2005. Sales in the first half of 2007were approximately 4 million units.It’s clear that there are a lot more smartphones on which to play gamesthan there are portable game units.
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