Hugh Thomas Quotes (8 Quotes)

Finding experienced staff still remains Taproot's biggest challenge and the single largest constraint on growth. Even so Taproot is now the largest independent Symbian OS software development organisation in North America. To achieve this it has pulled in people from all over the world including Europe, Asia, and North America. As well as employing experienced staff Taproot has also hired graduate students, which they have trained themselves. I think, from a global perspective, skilled staff is one of biggest challenges for the Symbian ecosystem, ... Not just for us but Symbian, all the handset manufactures and ISVs, it is still a challenge.

If you can bypass the wireless network, then you can make phone calls almost for free,

Licensing our WiFi product to Symbian was an important milestone for us. It provides a real endorsement that our technology is the de-facto standard for the future. From a commercial perspective it positions us well to deal with the handset manufactures, as they will know that they are protected for the future if they buy from us today.

We believe that WiFi is not just another Bluetooth or infrared port, ... It is foundational to what people will be doing with smartphones in the future. While Voice over IP is sometimes seen as a threat to operators' revenue streams it is also a big opportunity. It allows them to address new and emerging markets, in different sectors of the industry. Beyond VoIP, we see streaming media and interactive gaming as the other areas to benefit from WiFi.

Symbian's history and pedigree has always been around the mobile phone, ... Other operating systems have migrated from a desk top world where there has been LAN connectivity for sometime. Creating WLAN technology for Symbian OS meant we had to create a nu

So what does the growth at Taproot tell us about the overall Symbian device ecosystem We really only see a sub-section of the market, ... We currently make our living out of 5 to 10 customers, but this is twice as many customers as we had last year. Perhaps the most significant sign we see is that our semi-conductor partners, who see a broader section cross section of the customer base, have clearly recognised the value of the smartphone market and the features and capabilities that are pulled together by Symbian OS. Really you just have to look at the numbers to see Symbian is making its play.

We made the decision to go down this path because we could see that Symbian was on the right track, ... Eighteen months ago, when we put the business plan together, there were still some question over the ownership of Symbian and whether the market share was going eventuate. But we made the bet that Symbian was going to be successful and we wanted to be part of that success. Now I think that is a forgone conclusion that Symbian will be successful. They are growing their customer base and the device volumes are getting into the very significant numbers.

Over the next few years lower cost regions of the world are clearly going to offer certain efficiencies in developing code and that is just a fact of life that we have to deal with. Right now we have a smart bunch of people here who are focused and know what they are doing in a relativity niche area. I believe there is strong role for a company like ours creating leading edge technology and adding value to the larger community.