Symbian OS Becomes Free

IanFogg | June 24, 2008, 10:55 AM

Symbian OS will be available to all without payment of a license fee. And, to enable this, Symbian becomes a non-profit organisation with Nokia buying out the other current owners. See: www.symbianfoundation.org

Note - I'm writing this ahead of the news conference, so more details may emerge soon. Also, I'm sipping coffee out of a Symbian mug I was given ten years ago as a thank you for helping out with the Symbian corporate launch. With those caveats out of the way...

This step is a major change in business model to revive flagging adoption of Symbian OS (at least outside of Nokia). For years, Symbian's goal was wide uptake of its OS and the establishment of a de facto standard for smartphones. This common OS would enable application developers and others to innovate and drive adoption of mobile data. This strategy has clearly failed, and without a new initiative Symbian would have been consigned to be one player among many in the mobile market, with new entrants like Apple's iPhone and Google Android picking up share.

Whether this bold move will turn adoption of Symbian around remains to be seen. Even if it does, the new Symbian foundation may struggle to keep sufficient central coordination to deliver a single platform for third party developers. Without such a platform, application development will continue to be hindered by the (unnecessary) costs of supporting multiple platform variations.

If it fails, and Symbian OS remains one of many mobile OSes in the market, then similarly application developers will have to make difficut choices: Should they develop for iPhone, Windows Mobile, Google Android, RIM, Openmoko?? etc. etc.

Ironically, in such a balkanised mobile OS market, the easiest applications to develop across multiple devices will be those that integrate least with each OS and device. Or, many Internet companies will focus their efforts on their on mobile websites as the simplest and cheapest way of reaching the whole mobile population.

For Apple, Symbian and Google Android represent similar challenges to DOS/Windows. Both Apple's competitors are actively courting multiple device makers and encouraging licensing. But the mobile market is not the PC market. The devices need to be tightly optimised. Apparently small UI irritations quickly become major issues for users, when those quirks get in the way of making a phone call or sending a message while walking down the street.

This time, delivering the best experience may win, and Apple is well ahead in creating that uniformly elegant mobile experience.