Open Source Affect: Symbian free by Nokia, Microsoft and Apple listen

We reported yesterday that Nokia rule the Indian phone market and they are also the biggest handset provider in the world, but Apple’s 3G iPhone, Google Android and Open Source are threatening this title. The next generation iPhone will be in 22 countries on July 11 and over 40 more after that date, then we have Android that has been taken up by many of the worlds biggest phone brands and many of them will be launching phones with Android installed.

Will Nokia Stay Number One? Well they are going to try and one of the latest efforts is in buying the British software company Symbian. Nokia helped create Symbian and now they own it; they will make the software very attractive by making it free of charge. We touched on the power of Open Source yesterday and how this kind of software is affecting the “Pay For” software, Nokia are doing the right thing by making it free and many other brands like Microsoft and Apple might learn a few lessons here.

The Open Source Affect is happening and software that powers phones is crucial in the mobile phone business, Open Source makes products cheaper and also takes the power of many developers to create applications for mobile devices. The phones that have the best features for the best price and also the most third party apps are sure to win. This is where Google Android will really help phones shine and also open up the eyes of many consumers to the power of Open Source.

Symbian and Nokia’s position is really threatened now; although Symbian has 200m handsets in the consumers hands and 60% of the global smartphone market, do not think this is untouchable. The Google Android operating system will be coming at the end of 2008 and Apple’s iPhone is already making waves.

Nokia’s vice-president has said that buying Symbian and making it free had nothing to do with the threat from Apple and Google; this comment could be up for debate. If your the owner of a Nokia / Symbian phone, would you move to an iPhone or Android phone?