Symbian going Open Source, is it enough?
Well it looks like Nokia’s trying to get in on the smartphone party. Which is odd, to some degree, seeing as how by almost any measure Nokia or at least Symbian is the smartphone party. But it seems that there’s some writing on the wall and Nokia has read it. To that end it is buying out all the partners in Symbian OS and putting that property into a foundation with a goal of moving it to Open Source. You can check out their less than information filled press release.
Clearly this is a response to Apple’s iPhone and the in process Google Android. Symbian dominates the smartphone market but it gets no respect. It’s old time software and it just doesn’t have that sex appeal that the new offerings have. Nokia hopes to change this by moving it into the Symbian Foundation.
Strong competition for Android
Ultimately, and they say within two years, the whole shebang will be released under the Open Source Eclipse license. Prior to that they’ll be releasing little bits of it. But the Foundation will chart the future of the OS, anyone can join for $1500 and be eligible for various seats of importance or to get into the various working groups.
More importantly the OS will be offered royalty free. This puts it pretty directly in competition with Android. Unfortunately all these behemoths in motion do not move quickly, their first complete Symbian Foundation platform is expected to be released in 2010. By then Android should have reached fruition with at least a couple of handsets on the scene. If Nokia was able to move faster and launch earlier on in Android’s cycle, I suspect it could have presented a much more difficult environment for Google’s budding OS.
Apple should be able to out innovate them
Here’s my thinking on all this. Android and Symbian are both hobbled by being part of foundations. They have a lot of people to satisfy and politics to squeeze by. Apple is unfettered in how it can evolve it’s platform. With its tight control over the hardware as well, how can these two compete in terms of innovation?
Look at RIM, even though for years it was pretty static it now seems to be drafting behind Apple’s innovation. For the past couple years it’s been evolving it’s line pretty quickly and since the iPhone hit it’s been moving even quicker - it is able to do this because it also has the good fortune to control everything from hardware on up. I think with the iPhone on the scene, it’s going to be the key to success to be able to innovate at will.
Apple clearly has no shortage of good ideas on its hands and is leveraging everything it’s got from a mac developer base to ipod good will and it’s moving fast. I don’t see how long term Android or Symbian weighed down by their foundations and zillions of partners will be able to match that, although I give Google the edge between the two of them. I expect Symbian’s market share to drop a bit in the next couple years. Who do you like in this horse race?
