According to the oracle-like superbrains at J. Gold Associates, Google's Android OS and Nokia's Symbian will "
combine to provide a single open source OS," sometime in the very near future... say, three to six months. Sure, Android is just about to launch on devices in late 2008, and Nokia just announced in June that it will be moving Symbian towards open source -- and of course the two companies have no formal relationship that would come close to permitting such a collaboration. Still, J. Gold assures us this is happening, stating, "A combination of the Android and Symbian efforts would be good for the industry, good for Google and good for Symbian." In related news, we understand a handful of similar mergers are in the offing: Linksys and Belkin, Red Hat and Ubuntu, Engadget and Gizmodo, and the inevitable one-two punch of Coke and Pepsi.
Update: Craziest thing, it turns out that Google, Nokia, and Symbian are all dismissing the platform merger talk as utter nonsense. And for once, we believe those trusty souls; who knows, maybe it's the complete lack of technical synergy between them?
posted July 25th 2008 11:00AM
Because it reminds you of that giant O2 sucking vacuum that Rocket Robin Hood destroyed by shooting Will Scarlet's electric sword into its bag?
I just want a damn Android phone to come out already. For the love of god, make it happen my contract is up in October.
AWE..SM!!
Yea.....bullshit.
Obain 2008?
For those who didn't get it, Obama + McCain
No, no, no... McCama '08 FTW!
Or go with middle names.... Sissein '08
umm.... worst news ever? yeah that's what I think.
I hope it's 100% false. Symbian's outdated look and sluggish UI should be everything Android stands against.
You, sir, are confused. Symbian is an OS, like Linux. (Maybe that's a bad explanation; after all, some people think that GNOME is the Linux UI, and complain about it instead...) You may be thinking of S60, which, as a platform, has a distinctive look and UI; or perhaps you were thinking of UIQ or MOAP. They're all platforms, each including a UI, and all based on Symbian as the OS (with the exception of MOAP(L)).
That said, it's still not obvious why either possible merge direction would make any sense at all. Switching Android to Symbian makes less than no sense, and switching Symbian (itself an OS) to use the Linux kernel would leave little of Symbian intact; an S60 (or whatever) compatibility layer for Android would make more sense...
@Benson
Actually benson, you might want to check YOUR facts as well. Linux isn't an Operating System. It's a kernel.
In other news, J. Gold Associates believes pyramid-style business models work best.
First Android acquires symbian.
But, if Symbian gets two more OS platforms to join it, Android gets even stronger!
If those two platforms get two platforms each....omg I'm a genius!
I could see this coming miles away. Nokia has always said that Symbian was not good enough for future phones and that Linux would have replace Symbian. I am not sure what are the intentions here but one would think that Symbian is still excellent for low to high-end spec phones while Android is firstly thought for high to Overlord spec phones. I think that we are going to see both Android and Symbian Nokia devices (f*** yeah!!). I am not sure up to what point this 2 OSs can be integrated.
*replaced
"Nokia has always said that Symbian was not good enough for future phones and that Linux would have replace Symbian."
Sauce?
"You shall be Assimilated. Everything else is Irrelevant."
Analyst has no idea what he's talking about.
WAIT.
NOKIA IS CANADIAN!?
You know IF this happens it will end up being Symbian Series 60 with inputs from UIQ (Sony Ericsson, Motorola), MOAP (NTT DoCoMo) and Android (Google + Partners). But it will basically run all S60 applications.
From what I've heard Android is nowhere near ready, so it will have to be S60 with some input from Google (and the others of course).
Yet, somehow I doubt this, still it wouldn't surprise me since Google has been making apps for S60 for a while now and they can advance their real business plans much sooner by hopping onboard a mature platform.
SIMIAN+ANDROID = ROBO KONG! (or is't donkey borg?)
This is not stating it will happen but purely a prediction.
Mr Gold told me, "We have not sited any sources at either Symbian or Google for this report, as it is conjecture on our part, based on market analysis and what we believe should take place to advance the mobile market"
I will have more information on this at http://www.googleandblog.com/
,Michael Martin
I find it very unlikely.
Android = Linux = C
Symbian = C++
Joining these two codebases would be totally overkill.
According to this article Symbian going open-source isn't enough: http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=617&doc_id=157720&f_src=flffour
The author says they need to use Nokia's great research to make it better - not someone else (maybe Google?)