This is just going to fragment the market further and make it harder for developers to create mobile apps.
Symbian has been a very open platform, in fact in the previous version developers could get to anywhere int the file system, any server or app, whatever. It is a powerful and flexible system. Recently they have had to introduce stringent security measures because hackers were taking an interest and people started to get viruses hopping between devices via IP and bluetooth.
Android is going to face all the same issues so for the next couple of years we can watch it be disfunctional, inflexible and insecure until it catches up to the level that Symbian is now - not sure what the point of all that would be.
If Google wants better browsing on mobiles why doesn't it just develop a better browser for current mobile OSs? That would be much simpler, quicker and more useful.
I think supporters of Symbian (Nokia and Sony) are not big enough (in brand equity) and agile enough to get buy-in on the kinds of ambitious projects anticipated with Android. Symbian didn't even have an abstraction on radios and video graphics hardware until Screenplay and Freeway were announced in October this year. Google is in a much better position to "make things happen". I don't think Symbian will lose market share for a while, but this is exactly the kind of competition needed to bump the technology up to the next level. The technology sat stagnant too long. We have Steve Jobs to thank for setting the stage.
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This is just going to fragment the market further and make it harder for developers to create mobile apps.
Symbian has been a very open platform, in fact in the previous version developers could get to anywhere int the file system, any server or app, whatever. It is a powerful and flexible system. Recently they have had to introduce stringent security measures because hackers were taking an interest and people started to get viruses hopping between devices via IP and bluetooth.
Android is going to face all the same issues so for the next couple of years we can watch it be disfunctional, inflexible and insecure until it catches up to the level that Symbian is now - not sure what the point of all that would be.
If Google wants better browsing on mobiles why doesn't it just develop a better browser for current mobile OSs? That would be much simpler, quicker and more useful.
I think supporters of Symbian (Nokia and Sony) are not big enough (in brand equity) and agile enough to get buy-in on the kinds of ambitious projects anticipated with Android. Symbian didn't even have an abstraction on radios and video graphics hardware until Screenplay and Freeway were announced in October this year. Google is in a much better position to "make things happen". I don't think Symbian will lose market share for a while, but this is exactly the kind of competition needed to bump the technology up to the next level. The technology sat stagnant too long. We have Steve Jobs to thank for setting the stage.