| "Free" Symbian will affect Windows Mobile -- but how? |
Jun. 24, 2008
Finnish handset manufacturer Nokia has announced it will buy the rest of Symbian, then release the smartphone OS under an open source license. The OS will be governed and owned by a Symbian Foundation formed by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Ericcson, Panasonic, Siemens, AT&T, LG, Samsung, STMicroelectrics, TI, and Vodafone.
Nokia has long owned 49 percent of Symbian. Now, the company plans to buy out its former Symbian partners, paying a total of EUR 264 million (about $410 million U.S.), or EUR 3.647 (about $5.6) per share. Nokia has already received "irrevocable undertakings" for accepting the offer from Sony Ericsson, Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, Panasonic Mobil Communications, and Siemens, which are said to represent about 91 percent of the shares subject to the offer. It says it expects remaining partner Samsung Electronics to accept the offer, as well.
Nokia expects the acquisition to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2008, but notes that the deal is subject to regulatory approval. At the deal's close, all Symbian employees will become employees of Nokia, says the company. Symbian was established as a privately-owned company in 1998, with headquarters in London.
UI unification?
Currently, a variety of user interface layers are maintained for Symbian, including Nokia's S60, Motorola/Ericsson's UIQ, and NTT/DoCoMo's MOAP (which also runs on Linux). Early indications are that each of these layers would also be contributed to the Symbian Foundation. In separate announcements, Sony Ericsson and Motorola announced that they will contribute technology from UIQ to the Foundation, and Docomo has also "indicated its willingness" to contribute its MOAP(S) assets.
Additionally, the Foundation plans to develop a unified platform with a common UI framework, says Nokia. That software will be offered to all Foundation members under a royalty-free license, "from the Foundation's first day of operations," Nokia said. Membership in the Foundation will be open, at a cost of $1,500 U.S.
Coincidentally, today's announcement comes only a week after Nokia completed its acquisition of cross-platform mobile software provider Trolltech. In May, the latter company released version 4.4 of its cross-platform application development framework, Qt, with added support for Windows CE and Windows Mobile devices as build targets. Applications developed using any previous Qt versions -- which supported Windows Desktops, OS X, Java, and Linux -- can now be moved to Windows Mobile and CE, where they will look and act like native applications, according to Trolltech.
Thanks to Qt, therefore, Nokia has the potential to offer a single user interface, application set, and tools offering on all three major smartphone platforms -- Windows Mobile, Symbian, and Linux. In an interview with our sister publication LinuxDevices.com, Ari Jaaksi, Nokia's director of open source said, "Our goal is to have the same UI on both Linux and Symbian, and the Qt platform lets us move forward toward that, with its cross-platform technology."
Uncertain consequences for Windows Mobile
According to Nokia, Symbian OS accounts for 60 percent of the converged mobile device segment, with 200 million Symbian OS based phones shipped to date, covering 235 models from eight vendors. Nokia claims that four million developers are engaged in producing applications for Symbian devices.
Yet, analyst report after analyst report has forecast Symbian losing share to Windows Mobile and/or Linux in the long run. The primary reason? Symbian has been seen as too much in Nokia's control. What phone maker, given a choice, wants to license an OS belonging in large part to a competitor, and the largest competitor in the market at that?
Furthermore, owning only a minority stake in Symbian meant that Nokia could not really control the OS, in spite of industry perceptions. Perceived as a dictator, it was really only a paper dragon.
That will all change, assuming the deal passes regulatory approval. The Symbian Foundation will apportion board seats according to units shipped, putting Nokia more in the driver's seat than ever, while at the same time, likely increasing the market's perception of Symbian as vendor-neutral technology that can be used in differentiated products.
With Google's Linux-based Android smartphone platform already waiting in the wings, an additional open-source competitor can only put pressure on Microsoft to lower its licensing fees for Windows Mobile. On the other hand, the turmoil today's announcement has unleashed could drive vendors further into Microsoft's arms, seeking certainty and consistent marketing programs.
Sony Ericsson turned from Symbian to Windows Mobile for its Xperia X1
(Click image for further information) |
In the meantime, while Sony Ericsson has strongly been associated with Symbian-based devices, it turned to Windows Mobile for its forthcoming, highly anticipated Xperia X1, announced in February. The Windows Mobile 6.1-based device features an 800 x 480 pixel touchscreen display with custom user interface, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, an optical joystick, and FM and GPS receivers.
Further information
To read LinuxDevices.com's interview with Dr. Ari Jaaksi, go here. Additional resources include an analysis piece by eWEEK's Clint Boulton, here, and market analyst Andreas Constantinou's reaction, posted in his VisionMobile blog, here.
More information on the new Symbian Foundation can be found here.
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