Browse > Home /

Lee Williams: From Nokia’s S60 Organization to Symbian Foundation

Head of Nokia’s S60 organization, Lee Williams has been nominated to become the executive director of the Symbian Foundation, all ten board members had voted him in. The members include AT&T, Vodafone LG Electronics, Sony Ericsson Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, Nokia, Samsung Electronics, ST-NXP Wireless and Texas Instruments.

Williams has said that he felt honored to be invited to serve this new position, he feels that it is a great opportunity and he will help to deliver on the promise of the foundation. Lee Williams will work together with the stakeholders as well as the prospective members to help make this initiative a success.

The Symbian Foundation was formed by Nokia in June, following plans that they were to purchase Symbian outright. The Symbian Foundation has been growing all the time and now has the support of 52 companies.

Read full article

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Samsung i8510 at Symbian Smartphone Show

Nokia’s first S60 5th Edition phone and the Samsung i8510 will be on display at the Symbian Smartphone Show in October.

Exhibitors will be showcasing the latest handsets to Smartphone Show attendees and will include a preview of Nokia’s first S60 5th Edition based device (and first touch screen phone) the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic as well as the first 8MP camera phone on the market- the Samsung i8510 Read more

Symbian and Android force Mobile Linux Group LiPS merge with LiMo

It seems that Mobile Linux Group LiPS has had to merge with the LiMo Foundation because of increasing competition from the likes of Symbian and Android, this merger will only help to advance their OS. On Thursday the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum announced that they will be rolling their activities and members into the Linux Mobile Foundation (LiMo), it is hoped that this move will help to create a stronger entity for pushing mobile Linux.

Linux hope to be able to bolster their mobile Linux developer community as well as being able to increase the adoption of mobile devices. This move is now more important than ever, as there is now huge competition from Open Source competitors from the likes of the Nokia preferred Symbian and the Google backed Andriod. Linux hope that by unifying these companies, they will be able to provide a ubiquitous Linux-based mobile platform.

LiPS Forum president Haila Wang, has said “LiPS Forum is proud of our standardization efforts, development activities and other achievements of the last three years.” Wang then added “Our membership agrees that LiPS’s greatest impact can be realized by adding our members’ expertise and resources to LiMo Foundation. Together, the member companies can better strive for a unified and ubiquitous Linux-based mobile platform.”

Many have been expecting this merger for some time now, LiPS has wanted to create a formal standard for mobile Linux, and the LiMo Foundation has wanted to create a Linux framework which could then be quickly designed for mobile Linux. This new system will also face competition closer to home, in the form of the Linux-based Android operating system. However it is thought that the LiMo Foundation will have their handsets on the market first, the first of which should hit the market in a few short months.

Source

Open Source Symbian OS vs Android by Open Handset Alliance

There is a battle coming and the major winner in this battle of the brands will be the consumer thanks to Open Source, cheaper prices and better support. The new Open Source Symbian OS is being formed and will see the Symbian operating systems from NTT DoCoMo, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and Nokia become one big powerhouse.

This is bad news for Google Android that was in a position to take over the world with the help of the Open Handset Alliance (a group of big companies). With the MOAP, UIQ and S60 operating systems becoming one, we could see Symbian gain a much bigger market share in the U.S.

The news that the above four are joining the Symbian Foundation is bad, but what makes things even worse for Google’s Android would be the fact that Vodafone, Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics are also joining this new Foundation. Google and Open Handset Alliance do have T-Mobile USA and Sprint backing them but then these do not even come close to Vodafone and AT&T’s market share.

HTC has also teamed up with the OHA, but when we look at the overall picture of the powerhouses behind the new Symbian Foundation, it looks like this could become the most powerful mobile operating system ever. It will not be simple to make this happen, the Symbian Foundation will need to take the best of each OS to create one that creates endless possibilities.

We have talked a lot about Open Source of late and How Microsoft and Apple need to start waking up to this form of software, with the news of the Symbian Foundation being completely open source, it looks like other big brands will fall behind if they do not change. The Symbian Foundation will have many goals and one of the biggest is the same with all open source platforms, it will be to encourage developers to build compelling applications to benefit the community.

What can Google and the Open Handset Alliance partners do with Android to take most of the market share?

Source: Read

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?