 I knew something must be up when I received an email from a Symbian contact of mine requesting that I sit in on an American Press event (Webinar) that would take place in 30 minutes. This very well kept secret involved word of the Nokia purchase of Symbian and the creation of the Symbian Foundation... read on for more on this deal.
All the talk today in the mobile space is about the announcement for the Symbian Foundation, an open source movement that sees the future of the World's leading operating system moving forward as an open source, not-for-profit project, this thanks to the contributions of Nokia (Symbian, S60), Sony Ericsson and Motorola (UIQ) and NTT DoCoMo (MOAP(S)). Other names joining the Symbian Foundation will be AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone. In order to make it happen, Nokia has pledged to buy out Symbian shares from the "other" owners, the company will also contribute S60 and the Symbia OS to the open Source movement creating an open, royalty-free open platform that should drive development and innovation - it will also likely cause the Android movement to sit up and take note as well!
A press call today served to help clarify some of the details of the proposed foundation and provide some isights on the direction the mobile OS will take moving forward. At the heart of the project, the evolution of an open OS will serve to help define the next wave of the Internet and the mobile web. This is particularly important as the number of mobile device users grows from 3 to 4 billion, the last billion added largely being made up of consumers who's first web experience is on a mobile.
The plan
All partisans agreed that the open platform will serve to create a platform that provides a foundation for exciting mobile services, this particularly important as the demand for converged devices continues to soar. Mary McDowell, Senior VP, Nokia sees the Symbian + S60 + UIQ + MOAP(S) deal as the solution to provide a proven, open, complete, mobile software solution.
Participants
This slide pretty much says it all!
A few numbers to keep in mind:
- already 200 million Symbian OS devices in use around the Globe
- 4 million Symbian developers
- strong, existing support from the top 5 device OEMs
- Nokia will acquire the remain shares of Symbian for roughly 3.647 $EU per share or some 254 million $EU.
- already 20 new Symbian devices have been announced in 2008
- it took Symbian 8 years to realize the first 100 million users, only 2 more years to see the second 100 million users
- there are currently 7 device makers that license the Symbian OS
- 250 operators support in some way the existing 235+ Symbian OS device models
Look for the foundation to launch sometime in the first half of 2009.
Some comments and tidbits picked up upon by the industry leaders (Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Symbian, Motorola) as they discussed the project:
- the foundation will accelerate and fuel innovation , creating added-value to all
- membership is to be open to all
- source code will be available for free to all at launch
- there's a definite commitment to moving the platform to the open source ov er the next 2 years (Sony Ericsson)
- developers will enjoy a single point of access, including free tools and a wide offering of development environments including Java, Silverlight, and more.
FREE!
After the press call I noticed that an official member of UIQ was not in on the call, although parent company, Sony Ericsson was represented. This gave me cause to ask how UIQ would develop over in the future. this was of particular interest as Nokia execs eluded to the fact that rapid development and porting of existing S60 applications would not be a problem as the Open Source environment is planned to be Symbian 9 and S60 3 compatible - meaning anyone developing for this environment today will have no issues in the future. Not quite so rosy in the future as UIQ will apparently continue to develop over the next 6 months, after that UIQ will be under the control of the project... existing UIQ applications will likely not be directly supported, however, porting and migration is said to be enabled (likely) via an affordable path - an opportunity for developers perhaps??
The press call ended by reiterating that this move fulfills Symbian's initial mission and that more than 40 million lines of code will be opened up for access via the foundation.
Please note that this move is not a done deal at this time and is subject to regulatory approval.
See also:
The foundation is expected to start operating during the first half of 2009. Membership of the foundation will be open to all organizations, for a low annual membership fee of US $1,500.
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