Samsung Mobile Innovator is the latest developer support program from a Symbian OS licensee. I caught up with Phil Northam, the program's Global Marketing Manager and one of its founding members, to find out more.
Richard: It seems an odd time to be starting a new developer support program: the Symbian Foundation will be running in a few months and providing the bulk of developer support. Was it the right time to launch Samsung Mobile Innovator?
Phil: It certainly was. In many ways the Foundation is fantastic news for us here at Samsung. Today, Forum Nokia is a big supplier of our tools and documentation. This makes it hard for us to compete with them for developers' innovative ideas. The Foundation levels the playing field: Forum Nokia and ourselves will get our tools and documentation from the Foundation. So it will make it easier for us to show developers why they should bring their ideas to Samsung. Rather than being poor timing, the creation of the Foundation makes it a great time for our launch.
Richard: With the core of tools and documentation coming from the Foundation, what will Mobile Innovator concentrate on?
Phil: It's going to be very much the same as today's focus: differentiators. So we already have tools for the optical joystick, touch wheel, and G-Sensor. This will be a strong part of our role, providing and supporting open APIs that allow developers to make use of innovative Samsung technology.
The second, but equally important, aspect of what we will do is to provide developers with the best business and market channels. We expect these to encourage developers to bring their innovations to Samsung's Symbian devices first.
Richard: Why does Samsung see a need to specifically attract developers - surely the momentum behind the open platform should be enough to bring innovations to Samsung's Symbian devices?
Phil: Because ultimately software innovation will help drive handset sales. By combining Samsung's hardware innovations with third-party developer software innovations we believe we can differentiate our products and put Samsung firmly on the leading edge of smartphone innovation.
Richard: So how do you differentiate between differentiation and fragmentation?
Phil: Each Symbian Foundation licensee will want to differentiate their devices, through either hardware or services offered through those devices. At the same time no one wants to be investing in more APIs than they need to. So if a hardware item or service no longer offers differentiation in the market place it makes sense to take the APIs into the Foundation. That way we share the future development costs and free up our resources to work on the next differentiating product or feature.
Equally we will want our differentiating APIs to be the ones that eventually migrate into the Foundation code, so we - and I believe all licensees - will want to avoid fragmentation in the API's style. That is to say, we will all have a strong desire to create APIs that look and behave like Symbian OS APIs, because we will ultimately want our APIs absorbed into the platform.
So I believe we will bring differentiation to Samsung's Symbian devices, but the driving forces behind the Symbian Foundation means that the APIs we create to allow developers to take advantage of these features won't drive fragmentation.
Richard: While the device story is clearly important, how easy it is to work with Samsung Mobile Innovator and realize business opportunities might actually be more of a differentiator for developers. Would you agree?
Phil: We are all aware that once you've got the technical aspects in place, such as producing good quality APIs with solid technical support, it becomes very much about business development. So an important part of our role is working closely with the phone development teams and Samsung Fun Club (Samsung's consumer portal) to find opportunities for developers. We know that if we don't give developers the opportunity to do business they will go somewhere else and we don't want that.
Richard: How do you expect to compete with organizations like Forum Nokia, which has business development staff world wide?
Phil: It's true that we're still small compared to other players, but we only started six months ago and are still growing. I expect we will be able to offer developers similar coverage to existing programs in the near future. To achieve this we are working with Samsung's technology sourcing divisions, which have staff all over the world. We are building links with these teams right now, so developers will see local business development support quite soon.
Richard: Given Samsung is Korean and smartphone development takes place world wide, why was Samsung Mobile Innovator set up in the UK?
Phil: The technology originates from the UK, so that played an important role in the decision. We're located in Staines, close to the Samsung Symbian Lab. It's this lab that takes the Symbian and S60 source and packages it for the phone teams in Korea. Proximity to that team really helps when we are developing our extension APIs and plug-ins. Of course the Symbian Foundation is just down the road as well.
Richard: Do you see any drawbacks in being so geographically remote from Samsung's head office?
Phil: No. While we are co-located with the R&D centre, we have a reporting line directly into the Samsung Mobile Solutions Centre in Korea. This centre deals with a broad range of mobile consumer devices, such as MP3 players and also runs Samsung Fun Club. So we have a team at HQ that is dedicated to working with us. Also the time difference means that when we have an issue, we can leave a message with the Korean's who work on the problem overnight and we usually expect to come into a solution first thing in the morning. Clearly the time difference isn't always so advantageous, but I know we have the support from headquarters. And when this company makes a commitment, their commitment is really awesome. I think this is born out in what we have managed to achieve with the developer program in six months. It's been hard work, but the support has been incredible.
Richard: From a personal point of view, what attracted you to this role?
Phil: I'd been at Symbian for eight years and it was certainly time to find something new and interesting to do. Choosing this role was really very simple: how often does the opportunity to set up a developer organization come around? I have the chance to apply the experience of working with developers support programs while at Symbian and put in place the organization, systems, and processes at Samsung to build a world class developers support program. This will drive business opportunities for third-party developers and contribute to making Samsung's S60 devices the benchmark in smartphone technology.
Samsung Mobile Innovator is currently running a range of promotions to help developers bring their technology to Samsung devices, for more information visit Samsung Mobile Innovator.
