Endeavour Partners

We were interested (but not surprised) to see in Fierce Wireless Europe this morning that Samsung will no longer develop smartphones using the Symbian OS.  The major handset makers are all racing struggling to catch up to the iPhone user experience and realizing that Symbian will not enable them to do so.

This announcement comes on the heels of the launch of Samsung Bada, a new platform for mobile apps to run on Samsung devices.  Bada will be targeted at lower tier “transitional” devices rather than flagship smartphones — the real news here is an increased focus on Android.  Now Motorola, Samsung, HTC, LG and Sony Ericsson are all becoming more aggressive in Android.

The smartphone OS battle is shaping up to be a three horse race between iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.  Apple’s iPhone maintains a strong lead, but the combined efforts of five major device makers is resulting in rapidly improving Android devices (such as the Droid and Droid Eris) and a robust application ecosystem.  As my colleague Michael noted earlier in the week, elements of the Blackberry experience are starting to seem clunky by comparison.  But Blackberry maintains the lead in productivity applications and integration among them (email, messaging, contacts, calendar, phone), and this part of the experience will remain an important driver of smartphone adoption in the near-term.

In this intense competitive environment, Nokia must come up with its own answer to iPhone and Blackberry or will continue to bleed smartphone market share.  And smartphones are where all the money is.  Within 5 years, smartphones will represent over 50% of global device shipments, 75% of industry revenues, and roughly 90% of industry profit potential. The players gaining share in this segment are the market leaders of the future.  The players losing share in this space will face dire financial consequences.