Open versus Closed mobile phone Operating System

rpm said:
Open versus Closed mobile OS

As smart phones continue their upward trend in market penetration, more emphasis is being placed on mobile operating systems.
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It depends on perspective

Many businesses want devices that
* they can give to their employees that will make them more productive BUT
* that they can lock down sufficiently to prevent security and maintenance issues caused by idiots messing with them AND
* they want that out of the box so they don't have to get admins to do too much work

Techies on this blog want the devices to be open in every way so they can change the UI, OS etc. etc. After all if they break them they can fix them
And guess what? Both are correct. It depends on the application they are being put to.
 
Would you buy a computer that you had to manufacture yourself?
 
It's funny to me how Samsung provide their own OS and continue with Android on some of their devices. This to me shows that they don't think their OS is very good. Also this just brings more fragmentation and fragmentation isn't good for developers. To me, at the moment, Apple seem to have the best platform to develop for. Also incorporating Open standards into your product is OF UTMOST importance, eg. HTML5 and FaceTime.
 
Symbian is closed (up to ^3) and it is the market leader. Meego is open and seems to be the upcoming flagship OS for Nokia. So I doubt whether being open or not has anything to do with it. The only bad thing is if the company backing the OS has got an appletude problem - then user loose because of that.
 
i'm not sure there is a trend towards open OS's. Winmo7 is around the corner. IOS4 is only getting more popular. Bada is a great big Samsung poopstick. Meego is an unproven quantity. The only really open OS is Android, but then everyone skins it with their own, proprietary, UI anyway. Android's popularity is more about cost cutting for phone developers than any great overarching consumer trends.
 
cerebus said:
i'm not sure there is a trend towards open OS's. Winmo7 is around the corner. IOS4 is only getting more popular. Bada is a great big Samsung poopstick. Meego is an unproven quantity. The only really open OS is Android, but then everyone skins it with their own, proprietary, UI anyway. Android's popularity is more about cost cutting for phone developers than any great overarching consumer trends.
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Meego is based on Maemo which has being around a while. Symbian has gone open source and android is a strong competitor. I think its opening nicely.
 
w1z4rd said:
Meego is based on Maemo which has being around a while. Symbian has gone open source and android is a strong competitor. I think its opening nicely.
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Meego is an unproven quantity - Symbian is more or less dead in the water. Android is a strong competitor but it's a blank slate for what generally ends up being a fairly constricted end user experience anyhow. Maemo/Meego is a lot more open, but atm it's also too daunting for most users so let's see what happens with it.
 
cerebus said:
Meego is an unproven quantity - Symbian is more or less dead in the water. Android is a strong competitor but it's a blank slate for what generally ends up being a fairly constricted end user experience anyhow. Maemo/Meego is a lot more open, but atm it's also too daunting for most users so let's see what happens with it.
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My mate bought one of those FOSS hardware phones, went Maemo and installed Asterix on it!!!! Symbian is dead in the water only for smart phones, but I get what you mean. Only crappy low end phones will be running it.

As to Windows Mobile 7... its gotta be about 50 times better than V6 to even compete with iphone OS and android. I really hope for some improvements there because I have an omnia I used as a mp3 player atm because the OS is so sucky. The iphone OS only runs on apple tech so is going limited by default.

I think a FOSS will overtake closed source within 3 years.
 
I LOL at your attempts to make Nokia look puny and insignificant, its a futile exercise for Jobsian disciples.
 
I'm not trying to do any such thing Roux - ditching Symbian and going to Meego is a necessary but desperate move for them though. I hope they can pull it through.

I'm not sure the open/closed issue is even really relevant for mobile phones. Majority of users just don't care. It's not like a phone is a work environment - they just want a slick functional end experience. And that is all down to the handset manufacturers. Even if open source OS is used, it'll end up being skinned by a custom UI anyway. The user doesn't really want to get their feet wet by digging behind the surface. There are users who do enjoy that, and I'm one of them, but they don't represent the bulk of profit-making.
 
They are not ditching Symbian, in fact, they are going to make more Symbian devices now that Series40 is demoted to ultra-basics. Meego is not a desperate move, they have been using Maemo since the 770 Internet tablet (which was a great touch screen device years before fruity phones came out)

But I agree with you that being closed or open makes no difference really. Symbian is still king and it is closed while Andriod and Meego looks great and they are open.
 
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