Nokia to Up Symbian Stake to 100%, Then Open it Up
Oooooh Android. Things are not going well for you lately. First the Wall Street Journal reports that your release has been delayed and now Symbian, the most popular Smartphone Operating System in the world, will be opening up. Open?!? That was totally your thing! Well maybe not It’s ok, don’t worry; you’ve still got the Google juice going for you. Nokia has made a few major announcements this morning with regards to the heavyweight title holder that is Symbian. First and foremost, 48% ownership is not going to cut it anymore. Nokia will soon pony up €264 million ($412 million at today’s exchange rate) for the remaining 52% of Symbian to become the sole owner. Then what? Nokia has also announced the formation of a new organization: the Symbian Foundation. Foundation members currently include AT&T (huh?), LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, Vodafone, and more. The foundation will be the backbone of efforts with regards to creating “the most proven, open and complete mobile software platform - available for free”. The acquisition of Symbian is expected to be completed in Q4 of this year and it will likely be at least another year or so before we see the tree bear some fruit. We can’t wait.
Tags: Android, Foundation, Linux, Nokia, Open, Open Source, S60, Symbian
On Jun 24, 2008 @ 1:22 pm, phandroid.com Said:
The real question here is how can Motorola, NTT DOCOMO and Samsung be founding members of ALL THREE of these open source platforms (android, limo, symbian)
Seems to be a conflict of interest at SOME level, even if they are manufacturers:
http://phandroid.com/2008/06/24/android-vs-symbian-2/
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On Jun 24, 2008 @ 1:47 pm, ChrisNYC Said:
I love when Google gets smacked.
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On Jun 24, 2008 @ 6:04 pm, Mr Hopkins Said:
Way to go nokia! I love Google…really do, great effort @ creating something fresh. But there’s no replacing an OG like Symbian.
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On Jun 24, 2008 @ 9:41 pm, Harry Myhre Said:
This is great news for everyone.
Competition is always better than world domination.
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On Jun 25, 2008 @ 1:09 am, pheer6224 Said:
Harry up there is right, plus, they’re very different, android is Linux, while symbian is independent. I hope they compete, but there’s no way they’ll kill each other.
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