Nokia Buys Symbian, Takes the Mobile OS Open-Source
Google and Apple aren’t the only corporate giants intent on shaking up the wireless industry. Nokia announced Monday night that it is acquiring software maker Symbian — the company was already a minority stock holder — and releasing its mobile operating system under an open-source license.
The mobile hardware manufacturer, which uses Symbian software across it’s range of extremely popular S60 devices, is also establishing the Symbian Foundation, a collective of hardware and software companies who have pledged to donate code and resources to Symbian’s development. Phone makers Motorola and Sony Ericsson are on board. Among others, carriers NTT DoCoMo and AT&T and hardware component maker Texas Instruments have pledged support.
It’s a sign that the industry heavyweights aren’t going to take Apple’s plan for world domination with the iPhone lying down.
However, Nokia’s move is strikingly similar to Google’s plan with the Open Handset Alliance, its collective of industry players who have come together to build and nurture the Android open-source mobile operating system. On the carrier side, Google has NTT DoCoMo, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile. On the hardware side, HTC, LG, Motorola and Samsung have signed on.
According to Nokia’s press release, the company is even taking a similar approach to Google with the release of its final product by pushing out components of its code under an open-source license at first with the full OS to follow “over the next two years.” Right now, Nokia says it intends to release Symbian under the Eclipse Public License (EPL) 1.0.
While both platforms are open-source, there are two different strategies at play here — Nokia’s is to acquire a widely used OS, unify support and development resources, then roll it out onto its own devices. Google’s is to built a better operating system from scratch. While Google’s Android will likely have some quirks and hiccups common to nascent platforms, it will also benefit from the pure innovation seen when developers take a “sky’s the limit” approach to building a new OS. Nokia will benefit from the built-in support for Symbian on devices already on the market and the large developer base, but those developers, held back by legacy code and limitations inherent to the older platform, might not be able to compete as fiercely.
Something else to consider: volume. Proponents of open-source software have always maintained that numerical volume is the key to success. It’s obvious — if you want the best apps and the best support, all you need are more users and more developers. Nokia has the phones and the software already out there. But Google has the advantage of being able to more tightly integrate Android’s features with Google’s services. And show me an internet user who isn’t a Google user.
So who’s in the better position, the Open Handset Alliance or the Symbian Foundation? Or is it Apple, which maintains total control over the hardware, the software and the distribution? Or is it OpenMoko, LiMo or one of the other Linux-based smartphone platforms?
We’ll have a clearer picture of the power of these platforms later (Apple’s iPhone ecosystem is about to explode within the next month, Google’s Android is due later this year and the Symbian OS will start dribbling out next year at the earliest) but for now, we welcome your speculation in the comments.
See Also:
