Kind of old news this past week, but: “Mobile leaders to unify the Symbian software platform and set the future of mobile free” … but I wanted to post about the deal that was announced not too long ago … because it will be very important to the evolving mobile device platform playing field (IMHO).

If you had not heard, Nokia is buying up the rest of Symbian (they were already previously a 48% share holder in the company, BTW), and in the same move making Symbian open source (under the royalty free Eclipse Public License) under a “Symbian Foundation” of companies (currently) including: AT&T, broadcom, digia, NTT Docomo, EA mobile, ericsson, freescale, fujitsu, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Orange, plusmo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, ST, Symbian, Teleca, Texas Instruments, T-Mobile, vodafone, wipro, (and no doubt others to be announced at a later date).

If you don’t know who Symbian is, check out this whitepaper for a good intro.

They are the largest mobile smartphone mobile operating system company worldwide. Popular Symbian platforms include S60, UIQ, MOAPS, and other variant platforms that utilize the Symbian OS … and mobile “players” such as Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and NTT Docomo; use Symbian on their respective (mobile) devices.

So, from this deal we can a.) expect somewhat cheaper devices in the future (costs around $4 for Symbian to be on most devices for manufacturers), b.) support cost issues to increase (open source will lead to more variations of Symbian OS), c.) more compelling applications will be built, and faster innovation may be possible within the marketplace d.) things to get more exciting between Android, iPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile, and others.

I was reading an article in Nokia) doing this? This sums it up:

“We want to make this the most widely used software platform on the planet.” - John Forsyth (Symbian VP for Strategy)

Essentially, Nokia et. al, is taking steps to combat Microsoft (Windows Mobile - proprietary), Google (Android - open source), and Apple (iPhone - proprietary) and opening the platform is one step they are taking to compete most effectively between all these players.

Symbian is at a reported 67% market share globally, with only 10% in US (RIM, Windows Mobile, and now iPhone make up the bulk). Also, only Symbian currently only does 6% share on low-end devices (Symbian runs best on high-end smartphone devices).

Nokia has basically said; here is an OS for the development community, including a user interface, and addressable low level code; “now go to town”.

How will it play out? Not sure!

Expect to hear more next year (2009), when Symbian will ship to OEMs, and they consequently certify their devices prior to rollout.

Luckily, Google is stepping forth first with their alliance and Android *first*, so perhaps this will act as a precursor to what the Symbian Foundation will face in the coming year. We’ll see!

You can get more information over at: www.symbianfoundation.org

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Mark Doherty (Adobe), had a recent post on what this may mean (theoretically) in the future in terms of Adobe and Flash within the Symbian Foundation (in his words).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 1:43 am and is filed under Adobe, DoCoMo, Flash Lite, Flash Mobile, Flash Mobile Developer, Handsets, LG, Microsoft, Microsoft Silverlight, Mobile, Mobile Application, Mobile Business, Mobile Developer, Mobile Device, Mobile Ecosystem, Mobile OEM, Mobile Platform, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, Nokia Series 60, S60, Samsung, Symbian App, Symbian OS, flashlite, iPhone, nokia, sony ericsson, www.flashmobileblog.com. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.