Why Symbian, not Mac OS X, is the future of phones
Nathan Taylor gives the thumbs up to Nokia and Google's open source phone plans.
There was a time, a few years ago, when I was starting to wonder if open source was dying a slow death. Linux couldn’t put a dent in the desktop and Microsoft was pushing back on the server, Mozilla was struggling to compete with IE and the broad FUD campaign initiated by commercial vendors (most especially Microsoft) seemed to be getting traction.
Fast forward to today, and I couldn’t have been more wrong. Firefox continues to grow its market share, the Eee PC in particular has given Linux life on the desktop (forcing Microsoft to continue to sell Windows XP and to virtually give it away to system builders) and now even the mobile phone market is looking like going open source.
News came out today that Nokia plans to buy out the rest of Symbian (it currently owns roughly half), and then open source parts of Symbian OS under the Eclipse Public License. It’s a bold move, possibly motivated by the threat posed by Google’s Linux-based Android operating system, for which there is a good deal of buzz but yet no products on the market.
Symbian is currently the dominant smartphone operating system in use around the world, beating out the BlackBerry OS, Windows Mobile, iPhone OS and Palm OS by a considerable margin. More than half of all smartphones sold use Symbian OS.
Nokia’s plan is to submit the Symbian OS to a new Symbian Foundation, where it will be unified with other platform elements, like Sony Ericsson and Motorola’s UIQ interface, to create a common platform that all mobile phone providers can use royalty-free. This should make it easier, in theory, to create applications that work well across mobile phone models and vendors, and perhaps create a common interface so that people don’t have to relearn the interface every time they get a new smartphone.
This can only be a good thing. Smartphones have become so like computers that having a common “default” interface across phone models should make it easier for phone owners to use the devices and migrate their software and documents between platforms. While it’s unlikely that Apple or Research in Motion (creators of the BlackBerry) will sign onto this project any time soon, for all the press their products get they only represent a small proportion of the market right now. With Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG, Motorola and Samsung on board, open source Symbian OS looks to have a very bright future.
Other Blog Entries written by Nathan Taylor:
Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.
Be the first to comment on this article.