Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Nokia, and NTT DoCoMo have announced their intension to combine S60, UIQ, Symbina OS, and MOAP to create one single open mobile software platform. Also joining in this project are mobile phone carriers AT&T, Samsung Electronics, Vodafone, LG Electronics, Texas Instruments, and STMicroelectronics.
These huge and powerful mobile phone groups plan to establish the Symbian Foundation with the aim of extending the appeal of the unified software platform. Membership to the Foundation which is non-profit is open to all organisations and is supported by the current shareholders and management of Symbian Limited.
To enable the Foundation, Nokia has acquired the remaining shares of Symbian Limited which it did not own and then contributed the S60 and Symbian software to the Foundation. Motorola and Sony Ericsson announced they will contribute technology from UQI, while DoCoMo is willing to contribute their MOAP assets. A full platform will be available to every member royalty-free from day one of operation.
Nigel Clifford, CEO of Symbian, says: “Ten years ago, Symbian was established by far sighted players to offer an advanced open operating system and software skills to the whole mobile industry. Our vision is to become the most widely used software platform on the planet and indeed today Symbian OS leads its market by any measure. Today’s announcement is a bold new step to achieve that vision by embracing a complete and proven platform, offered in an open way, designed to stimulate innovation which is at the heart of everything we do.”
CEO of Nokia, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, adds:”Establishing the Foundation is one of the biggest contributions to an open community ever made. Nokia is a strong supporter of open platforms and technologies as they give the freedom to build maintain and evolve applications and services across device segments and offer by far the largest ecosystem, enabling rapid innovation. Today’s announcement is a major milestone in our devices software strategy.”
President of Sony Ericsson, Dick Komiyama, said: “The complete, consistent platform that the Foundation plans to provide will allow manufacturers to focus on their unique differentiation at a device level. Sony Ericsson believes that the unified Symbian Foundation platform will greatly simplify the world for handset manufacturers, operators and developers, enabling greater innovation in services and applications to the benefit of consumers everywhere.“
Source — Motorola