Could Nokia dump Symbian?
posted Jul 24th 2005 7:24PM
Is Nokia going to ditch Symbian
and go open source? Nokia's practically synonymous with Symbian (they own 47.9% of the company which oversees the
mobile OS and release 70% of the Symbian-powered smartphones each year), but the analysts over at ARC think it's no
longer inconceivable that Nokia might dump the OS altogether and port its Series 60 interface to Linux (sort of like
how PalmSource is porting the Palm OS to Linux). Their
evidence? Nokia's decision to license Microsoft's ActiveSync technology directly — even though Symbian had already cut
a deal with Redmond — combined with their recent announcement of the 770, a non-cellphone handheld that runs on Linux
instead of Symbian and the potential megabucks they'd save in royalty payments by porting to Linux, has them thinking
that it might not be as far-fetched as it sounds. If they do make the switchover there'd be some potentially huge
compatibility headaches, but nothing they couldn't get over, especially since a lot of Series 60 apps are written in
Java. Oh, and keep in mind that this is all speculation, so far we haven't heard anything concrete from Nokia that
would indicate that they're actually going to walk down this road.
[Thanks, Sammy]
hmmm, symbian is a leader in the smartphone market. but it could be said that that is because Nokia is behind it. so if nokia drops it and goes after a linux based OS, then it would succeed too. nokia know what they are doing. i like them, even though i currently own a treo.
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Save money in royalty payments? They own 48% of the company, so much of the royalty comes back to them anyway.
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well, nokia did say in the latest issue of the personnel magazine ("Nokia People") that they have a linux strategy, but don't intend to dump symbian in favor of it... but i guess we'll see!
but the main companny behind the aprovment of the laf of software patents in europe is nokia, so that doesnt have much sense
"Save money in royalty payments? They own 48% of the company, so much of the royalty comes back to them anyway"
I cann't find any logic in the argument either
I really dont know why they would want to dump symbian. Being a die heart sony ericsson fan I almost envy them with there fancy symbian phones. My P910 is a monster in size. My brother has always had symbian Nokias and he constantly boasts how cool and everything they are...
I think dumping them would be a bad move. but who says linux wont be better?
I've just began an new website about symbian s60, don't do that Nokia :P !
"...especially since a lot of Series 60 apps are written in Java."
Yeah, but the decent apps that you would actually want to use are natively Symbian. As long as Nokia can keep up their support from third party companies, as well as create a community as they have done for the 770/maemo ( http://maemo.org/ ), then all will be well.
having developped stuff for nokia in the past, i got a good glimpse at their symbian stuff; it's a great OS with tons of potential, but i'm still unimpressed by what everybody does with it, ie. it's very generic and doesn't stand out of the crowd (vs. blackberryOS or palmOS or PPC, or any other closed OS like Moto's). Most of the time it's the hardware that should be blamed (well, the team that picked it and the execs that went forth with it are at fault, usually for cost reasons), too slow or weak to bring nifty Symbian apps to life, but Nokia has also the same problem as Siemens and Sony Ericsson when it comes to Symbian phones: they do everything, but don't do anything well. It's execs' (sales, marketing) complete lack of vision and understanding that I blame for this.
I just got a Nokia 6680 and I'm very pleased with how much you can maipulate the thing, moving menu icons around is awesome so you can set evrything up easily so things are where you want them to be. The active standby screen works pretty well, I've ditched my Axim completely in favour of this now. If they are going to change to Linux, just make sure it has the same flexibility as it does now on Symbian otherwise it would eb a shame. I already vowed to stick with this sort of system in the future as I love the interface so much.
The whole Linux tablet thing is because Nokia is heading to a Voip Strategy, not because they are dumping symbian
This is my response here: http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/viewarticle.php?id=187
Frankly the whole idea just seems very unlikely if you give it a few moments thoughts.
probably in 4 to 5 years from now. nokia will drop symbian and replace it with linux. motorola is always saying in the future we will be using linux in mobile phones but there is no action. this applies to palmsource as well. motorola, palmsource doesn't have an active linux users group compare to nokia (maemo.org).
reminds me of when nokia dropped geos (9000 and 9110 communicators) for symbian. if history is any guide, and if linux makes real inroads... geos was licensed to nokia from geoworks, so they didn't own the os; symbian is partly theirs, so they have a huge measure of control over it, so what about open source linux?
Actually, i think the symbian OS brought a whole new experience in the mobile technology [considering the number of nokia phones out there] but probably moving to Linux is for the best. Nokia owns a big part of symbian but i dont think that should hinder it from moving to linux. Linux has a strong support community and this could yield outstanding results.