The major mobile manufacturers are joining forces with operators
to make the
Symbian mobile OS free to develop and use, which will make it
even harder for Microsoft to establish its
Windows Mobile OS in the mobile market.
Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Japan's NTT DoCoMo have
announced their intent to "unite" the Symbian OS with the S60, UIQ
and MOAP(S) operating software from the various suppliers to create
one open mobile software platform.
Together with
AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics,
STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone (a Windows
Mobile partner), they plan to establish the Symbian Foundation to
extend the appeal of this unified software platform.
Membership of the non-profit foundation will be open to all
organisations.
The initiative is supported by shareholders and managers of
Symbian Limited, who have been actively involved in its
development.
To allow for the creation of the foundation, Nokia, Symbian's
main supporter, today announced plans to acquire the remaining
shares of Symbian Limited that it does not already own, and then
contribute the Symbian and S60 software to the foundation.
Sony Ericsson and Motorola have announced their intention to
contribute technology from UIQ, and NTT DoCoMo has also indicated
its willingness to contribute its MOAP(S) assets.
From these contributions, the foundation will provide a unified
platform with common UI framework. A full platform will be
available for all Symbian Foundation members under a royalty-free
license, from the foundation's first day of operations.
Contributions from foundation members through open collaboration
will be integrated to further enhance the platform.
The Symbian Foundation will make selected components available
as open source at launch. It will then work to establish the most
complete mobile software offering available in open source. This
will be made available over the next two years, and is intended to
be released under Eclipse Public License (EPL) 1.0.
Symbian is already loaded on 200 million phones across 235
models, and is the industry's leading OS for smartphones. Although
Microsoft's Windows Mobile has been chipping away at Symbian's
marketshare in recent years, it has struggled to be adopted by many
mass market devices.