Web 2.0 Expo – Nokia S60 Widgets – Are we making any progress?

Nokia announced its S60 Widget platform – Web Runtime at the Web2.0 Expo yesterday.  I attended their presentation, which was given by a marketing person.

 When you do away with the hype and the (really) cool demos, what you end up with is this:

- Users (who must have up-to-date S60 phones) can download “widgets” to their phones,

- These widgets deliver “point” solutions for specific use cases (weather, ebay, etc.).

Hmm… let me see… if we use the term “application” instead of “widget”, we end up with this model:  User downloads application to his phone, and uses it to access web-based information.

Wow!  True innovation.   Not. 

Can anyones say “Java apps”?  The Nokia presenter failed to explain why adoption would be higher for “widgets” than for “applications”.   The fact is that most users simply do not download/install stuff on their phones.

The presenter also used some (IMHO) misleading stats to enhance the appeal of the solution.  Even though it targets only S60 devices, which currently command a very low market share, Nokia used stats which show global mobile phone penetration (billions of devices).  When challenged by the audience, the presented acknowledged that the stats were irrelevant for the topic at hand.

Worst, the presenter acknowledged (only when asked) that even current S60 phones will not be able to support this new functionality (which has not yet been launched, and is still in beta). 

In other words, no one, right now, can use S60 widgets.

The pitch at Web2.0 Expo was clearly for developers – attracting widget developers in order to enhance the value of the S60 OS.  But attracting developers will depend on commercial availability, marketing channels, business models and adoption rates.  On all these issues Nokia is silent.

What is the role of the carrier in the seemingly open S60 widget world?  We don’t know.

What are the expected business models?  We don’t know.

How will it be any different than the Java model?  We don’t know.

Finally, a comment for presenters:  Sometimes more is less.  The Nokia presenter joked that “…I’m surprised – I just went through for demo examples, and nothing went wrong…”.  One of the first questions that came up had to do with the stability of the new technology – “…why were you surprised?  Did you expect anything to go wrong?…”

— Oren