Nokia to acquire Symbian<< Nokia to acquire Plazes | Main | Together we can do more >> Thomas Husson | June 24, 2008, 02:40 AM Well, more precisely Nokia has announced it will acquire the approximately 52% of Symbian Limited shares it does not already own. Simultaneously, a Symbian Foundation is to be established to provide a royalty-free open platform. Such initiative is announced to be backed by Sony Ericsson, LG, Samsung (the 3 manufacturers will have no more shares in Symbian and LG/Samsung are involved in Google's Android project) Motorola, and by operators such as NTT DoCoMo, Orange and Vodafone: more information is available here. That's a way to counter the free open source approach that will be promoted by the backers of the Linux kernel. It will be interesting to see how the game will change between Microsoft, RIM, Apple, Linux-based environments and Symbian over the coming years. Who will enable the best user-experience and who will provide the most flexible solution? With more than 200M devices shipped since launch in 2000, Symbian is the dominant player and has proved its capacity to provide stability, performance, security to its clients. Its main advantage today is its existing relatinships with operators and an existing installed base that developpers can already tap into. Expect more to come today from my colleagues. |
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