I love my Nokia 7610 but it's not a platform. There are far too many differences in the J2ME and Symbian OS implementations on all the phones out here to make a real platform that developers can develop on top of and make money IMHO. Imagine a world where there were 10 different versions of Mac OS X and Windows deployed on millions of computers (and most people couldn't or wouldn't upgrade the platform to the latest version). That to me is the reality of today's mobile software "platforms": lots of different implementations which are different enough to make writing an app and supporting it very difficult. Even Nokia can't do it. For example, the current version of Lifeblog doesn't run on my 1 year old 7610!

From Enertainment Evolution.:

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The numbers below are part of a monthly Forum Nokia report that does a good job of quantifying the opportunity.

* 300 million devices based on the Nokia platform shipped by the end of 2005
* 110+ devices
* 50+ Java MIDP 2.x enabled devices
(Source: Nokia, November 2005)

* 190+ operators worldwide have deployed Java services (Nokia : 2005)
* 708 million mobile Java devices shipped by the end of 2005 (Ovum, June 2005)
* 635 mobile Java device models (Sun Microsystems, June 2005)
* 32 mobile device vendors using Java (Sun Microsystems, June 2005)
* 45,000+ mobile Java applications (Informa Telecoms & Media, June 2005)
* Approximately 23 million mobile Java downloads globally per month in 2005 (Nokia, November 2005)

* 25 million S60 smartphones by the end of 2005 * 100 million S60 smartphones by the end of 2006
* 30+ S60 devices
* 5 S60 licensees
(Source: Nokia November 2005)

* 200+ operators selling Symbian devices
* 39 million+ Symbian OS devices on the market by the end of 2005
* 54 Symbian OS device models shipping by the end of of June 2005
* 11 Symbian OS licensees have Symbian OS phones under development
* 5000+ applications available for Symbian OS devices
(Source: Symbian %u2018Aug and Oct 2005)

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