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Symbian Blasts Google's Phone Initiative
nowhere.elysium writes "Symbian has suggested that Google is not experienced enough or capable of fully developing a workable mobile platform. Symbian's vice president, John Forsyth inferred that Google's interest in the field will also wane due to it being 'deeply unsexy', and that development is not likely for such a platform because "You have [...] a lot of zeroes in your sales figures before a developer gets out of bed."
In the same series of statements, Linux is likened to the common cold: "About every three months this year there has been a mobile Linux initiative of some sort launched. It's a bit like the common cold. It keeps coming round and then we go back to business.""
Or should they go: "Oh no, we are going out of business soon!" I suppose investors wouldn't like to hear this.
Symbian was formed and supported out of one single reason: Microsoft
The mobile phone makers, that used to hold a stake in Symbian (Motorola, Nokia and Ericsson each a quarter with Psion having the last quarter IIRC) bought the IP of Epoc from Psion and founded Symbian, because they were scared that Microsoft (with Windows Mobile) would attain the same dominance in the mobile phone market that it held in the PC market.
That danger is over and Symbian ownership has shifted around a bit. Also Microsoft did not yet become such a threat. I suppose that in the mobile phone market there is enough space for everyone. The numbers of units is much higher than in the PC market and it is still growing much faster. Apple just joined it btw. And even if they were to capture only 1% of the world market, they would make a huge profit from the huge amount of sales that this would mean in numbers.
Same with Google.
Mod this down, it's complete bullshit from someone who hasn't a clue. The SDKs for Symbian OS are free downloads, there are plenty of shareware and freeware developers working on it, and you don't need any license to install such apps on a phone.
It will cost to buy a certificate to certify the app as non-malicious and fit for purpose, and without that the user will get a warning when installing that the app is unsigned. But that is a quite reasonable security step given that phone malware could cost serious money on a phone bill. But the lack of such a cert doesn't stop you from using or distributing free apps.
Developer certificates *are* free. For anyone. You only start paying if you want to distribute a signed application.
You pay for the certificate if you want to start distributing commercial apps. That's no more cost than you would pay for a signing certificate on Windows for example and if you can't recover that cost how are you paying your devs in the first place? You do *not* have to submit the app for testing once your company has a certificate, as the signing application is part of the SDK. We actually have one, although the project that was going to be used for it got shelved.. the cert. is there though and I could use it if I wanted.
Even many independent applications distribute signed because it's easier on their customers. At the free end the more common model is to distribute unsigned and sign it yourself using a dev. cert. - and that's just a tedious extra step (pity they made it mandatory.. optional was far better).
That hardly counts as 'hostile'. Windows mobile needs signed apps, you can bet the google OS will have similar requirements and the iphone definately will (if they ever release the SDK to non-approved developers, which is looking doubtful).
Are you high? Development seats cost $! Applications must be signed, which means lighting more $ on fire.
And no! Standard C++ is not supported! It's Symbianized C++, with a stupid proprietary try/catch model that forced the developer to push object onto a cleanup stack, which COMPLETELY destroys the possibility of clean, platform-independent code.
Worst of all, many API's are proprietary Nokia information, and require some kind of business deal with Nokia.
Nokia would do well to continue down their current path of supporting C++ exceptions, POSIX threads, and BSD sockets. But - hey now - wouldn't Symbian be like Linux?
You're clutching at straws here. It works as a WiFi AP, and that's what matters.
What is this "their code"? An access point that runs Linux has a kernel and software the vast percentage of which weren't written by Cisco. At best Cisco added a driver for the chipset and some code for the web interface. Hardly a huge sacrifice compared to the amount of code they got for free. Not to mention that nothing stops them from using a closed source kernel module and writing the CGI scripts in some compiled language.
No, the reason the new versions don't run Linux is that vxworks can be made to work using less RAM and Flash space, which costs less to manufacture.