One of the bad things about living in Texas is that my time is off from Europe, so I’m usually the last one to hear about massively big announcements, such as the one that Nokia made earlier today. Nokia will be purchasing the remaining shares of Symbian, and bringing the entire company under Nokia control/ownership. It will then take the next completely massive step of making everything related to Symbian, which includes S60, UIQ, and MOAP(S), into the Symbian Foundation, an open source consortium. The whole process should take around 2 years to complete.
What does this mean to you, the consumer? Basically, nothing right now. However, looking into the future, it means EVERYTHING, and will completely change the face of the mobile industry. Symbian is currently the most-used smartphone operating system in the world, other than in the U.S., obviously. Nokia is the largest handset manufacturer in the world, with nearly 40% of the global market. And that’s all going open source.
What does open source mean? It means that Symbian, and the UIQ and S60 platforms that are built on it, will be made openly available under the Eclipse Public License. The Symbian Foundation will have an annual membership fee of $1,500, which gives access to the entire source code for S60, UIQ, Symbian, and MOAP(S). Any handset manufacturer or other device manufacturer can join and have access, and build devices using the platform without having to pay individual royalties on each device sold.
The list of partners who have already committed to the Symbian Foundation is pretty earth-shattering, as well, including AT&T, NTT Docomo, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone in terms of carriers. Handset manufacturers who’ve signed up include LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson. Tech leaders such as Broadcom, Fujitsu, Texas Instruments, and WiPro are also on board. This is an army, more or less.
This is a massive step for the mobile and open source communities, and a big deafening blow to mobile Linux and more importantly – Android. Essentially, the Symbian Foundation is what Google intended Android to be, only it’s already millions of devices strong. The ecosystem is already built, and thriving.
You can read more on this at the Symbian Foundation, or you can download the whole white paper (PDF link)
