Slashdot Mirror
Nokia Takes Control of Symbian
jpatokal writes "CNN reports: Nokia has bought out Psion's share of Symbian, pushing its stake in the mobile phone OS to a dominant 63%. This means rivals like Siemens and Samsung may now pretty much be forced to choose between proprietary Nokia or Microsoft technology. Symbian may be the more open of the two, but GPL it ain't - does Linux now have an edge?" We reported on a rumor to this effect late last year.
Why does GPL have anything to do with how good an OS can/could be? Jeebus...
Sure its still proprietary, but it is another option.
"...does Linux now have an edge?"
No, No, No, NO! This has been discussed so many times it is unbelievable. Linux on your handheld is for people who want to run X apps remotely, ssh into their routers/servers etc. It is NOT (yet) for folk who want to simply write e-mail, update a calendar, play games and synchronise with a windows machine. Sorry, but it just isn't ready for this market area yet. Every year we hear how "200x is year of the Linux desktop" and every year we get excuses, lack of support from big vendors and API change problems which make porting apps a nightmare.
What "Linux on a PDA" needs is backing from a big vendor with plenty of cash to back it up. The only way this is going to become a reality in a fast moving sector such as PDAs is to play in the big arena with the giants (Microsoft and Nokia).
Yeah, and follow the link and you see it's Symbians own webpage that says it's the better. Are peoples bullshit detectors broken when it comes to M$ competitors these days?
if you look at market shares, they don't. Plain and ugly truth: market's pretty much dominated by Symbian and Bill is trying very, VERY hard to get his share, too. Doesn't look good for PalmOS
Sigs for Nerds. Sigs that Matter.
I think this is very good for Linux, Any manufacturers who are looking to develop any new handheld technology,but do not want to be tied to any corporation like MS and Nokia will opt for linux - and even though they have a large market share, Nokia aren't completly dominant in the Phone/Handheld market.
It's hard enough to remember my opinions, never mind the reasons for them..
Siemens, Samsung, Sony-Ericsson, et al (see former ownershop smybian) are all ambitious mobile phone companies. They would be completely dependant on Nokia if they exclusively chose Symbian a.k.a. Nokia Series 60/70.
...
Instead they'll expand their technological portfolio.
Current situation: nearly no M$ smartphones (except some models from motorola), mostly symbian dominated market.
Possible future situation: M$ *and* Symbian phones from Siemens, Samsung,
Conclusion: M$ is the lucky winner.
Damn.
Having used both types of handset before, I personally feel that the Symbian OS is more user friendly, and better. But ulimately, I believe consumers usually take more into consideration the phone design, weight, stylish factor....than the OS features. As much as I would love to buy a linux phone, it first has to appeal to me in terms of looks and design, and the easy availibility of third party apps.
well, dunno about that but hopefully it means that nokia will be keeping it's symbian platforms going on for a while, and preferably standardised well enough that programs work over generations of phones so that there will be plenty of stuff available(6600 which is series60 v2 runs most of well thought series60 v1 stuff ok, sx1 from siemens seems to run everything ok as well.)..
a shameless plug, http://kotiluola.net/~glass/visul.sis
asteroids clone with 3d rendered graphics for symbian series60 phones (6600,n-gage, 3650, 3660, 7650, sx1).
and another shameless plug in finnish:
Ja kellaan tampereen alueelta koodiorjan paikkaa symbianii vaantaan teekkarille?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The problem is that Samsung and Siemens are now essentially being asked to license an OS from, and pay fees to, their largest competitor. As Microsoft just makes software, not the actual phones, it is not seen as a competitor in the same way, and licensing Windows Mobile may not be such a bitter pill to swallow.
Last year, it was already obvious that Nokia (who controlled the Symbian UI) would become the primary vendor for Symbian itself.
Motorola tried Microsoft, decided they did not like it, and started to build Linux phones.
This is going to be a three way fight between Symbian, Linux, and Microsoft. My guess is that Symbian will win because it is a superb platform and Nokia have timed this move perfectly.
Linux will beat Microsoft because anyone who is unwilling to pay the Nokia license fees for Symbian is unlikely to want to pay Microsoft either.
But this does not really change things for firms like Samsung - they will probably be happy to ue a standardized UI and OS while also developing their Linux platform on the side.
The big loser here is Microsoft, who might have fragmented a Symbian owned by several people, but are unlikely to score a good hit now.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
For example take the entire hypothetical situation in which the OS on which your business depended suddenly becomes under the control of your business rival.
Wouldn't it have been nice to have your own OS, or at least an open one. Or you can just trust that your business rival will play fair and make sure that the OS can be made to work on your platform. It could happen.
I own both a Nokia 3650 and a Sony-Ericsson P800 and I strongly prefer UIQ. Last I looked Nokia and Sony-Ericsson were competitors. Does this bode well for the future of Symbian/UIQ phones?
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
Sadly, interest in things being open source is transitioning (my cynical colleagues might say it already has) from being about controlling quality and maintaining code that a corporation might 'sunset' to being more about religion.
In my experience (working in the financial industry), it goes more like: Happily, interest in things being open source is transitioning from being about controlling quality and maintaining code that a corporation might 'sunset' to being more about security from being held hostage by ones vendor.
In other words, businesses are recognizing the concern and need to have the freedom to conduct their business without coercion from outside, i.e. they are recognizing the value of freedom as being of even greater importance than the cooperative, peer-review paradigm that improves quality.
This is an important breakthrough in corporate mentality, and I have seen it spreading rather quickly among the suits of late.
Strategicly, software freedom (particularly at the infrastructure level such as an operating system) is very important to an enterprise: not just from the orphaning of software your comment implies, but from other forms of vendor lock-in and coercion, be it coercive upgrade cycles that disrupt one's business, security patches that sabatoge competitors products one's enterprise may be using (by submarining in incompatible DLLs, for example), and by having a mission critical, proprietary product yanked when one's vendor suddenly becomes one's competitor.
I've seen all of these things happen, and I suspect Siemens et. al. are very cognizant of this as well. These are scenerios that GPLed software does a great job of protecting against, BSD-licensed software protects against to a lesser degree, and proprietary products leave one completely vulnerable to.
There may be very compelling strategic reasons for these companies to switch to a (currently) inferior GPLed product over a proprietary product rather than risk having their mission critical vendor (Nokia today, Microsoft tommorrow) becoming their most ruthless adversary...reasons that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with "religion."
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
does Linux now have an edge?
Only if it's a superior OS in terms of compatability, usability, and cutting-edge features. Please remember that on the whole, consumers don't care which phone is more open from a codebase perspective, only whether it supports the features they want.
The other side of it is that Nokia may have development plans for the OS that they have no interest in sharing with the others. If the consortium is holding back innovation (at least from Nokia's perspective), there may be a flood of new features coming our way.
You sly dog: you got me monologuing! - Syndrome
One of the reasons that Symbian was able to get such grand attention and universal support was that so many of the worlds major phone makers had an equal stake and they all had a say in the final process.
If Symbian is now majority owned by Nokia, then Nokia will likely be the only company using it going forward.
Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Siemens, even NEC have all been eating away at Nokia these last 6-9 months. That Symbian market share number is going to drop real fast.
What "Linux on a PDA" needs is backing from a big vendor with plenty of cash to back it up. The only way this is going to become a reality in a fast moving sector such as PDAs is to play in the big arena with the giants (Microsoft and Nokia).
Yes, this is exactly what I meant. If a big phone company -- say, Siemens or Samsung -- wants to compete without licensing Symbian or whatever Microsoft's portable OS is called today, pretty much the only option (other that slugging it out alone and dying a painful death) would be to use GPL software like Linux. Sure, it would take a lot of work to make it match the latest Symbian, but that's not the target market: the cheaper price becomes more attractive in the lower segment, where you don't really need all that much in the way of UI software. And then that can grow incrementally the way GPL projects do.
And FWIW, I have a brand-new Nokia 6600 with Symbian... and underneath the pretty chrome, the GUI is painfully slow, maldesigned and crash-prone.
Cheers,
-j.
Oh please. One of my co-workers actually bought one of those things about a year back. The damn thing is huge. Seriously, it's larger than the original analog AMPS cell phone I had ten years ago. It's an interesting technology demo, sure, but not something that any actual human being would want to cart around and use.
:)
I think he actually cried when I showed him my Treo 270. Then he bought one himself.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.