Nokia takes battle to Google
In a move that promises to shake up the mobile space, Nokia has announced it will buy the remaining portions of Symbian and then release the mobile operating system as open source software. The move, as Google struggles to meet its targets with the open source Android operating system, makes the search giant’s efforts a lot less compelling.
What is also interesting is that Nokia is not only spending more than R3.2 billion on Symbian and then giving it away, but that it is not doing it alone. Yesterday Sony Ericsson and DoCoMo also announced that they will make their user interfaces – UIQ and MOAP(S) – freely available as well. Nokia’s S60 user interface is included in the open sourcing of Symbian.
Companies such as Sony Ericsson and DoCoMo build their own user interfaces on top of the Symbian OS.
Symbian is the dominant mobile operating system platform with a current market share of around 70% and earlier this year the company exceeded 200 million in shipments. Recently, however, that market share has been in gradual decline and the open sourcing of Symbian could well be the energy boost that Symbian needs right now.
Google’s Android, a free mobile platform, has also suffered setbacks and at this point handsets based on its OS look unlikely before the end of 2008 or early 2009. Together with Apple’s iPhone due out in July and an open sourced Symbian, Google suddenly has a huge battle on its hands, and one that even its deep pockets may not be able to win.
In March of this year there were already more than 9 200 third-party applications built for the Symbian platform. With hundreds of millions of copies of its OS already in the hands of users, Symbian could well hold onto its dominant market position if, that is, open source developers embrace the project.
And with Samsung, Motorola and LG also backing the newly-formed Symbian Foundation the growth of Symbian looks all but a certainty.
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