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Nokia Claims Ogg Format is "Proprietary"
a nona maus writes "Several months ago a workgroup of the W3C decided to include Ogg/Theora+Vorbis as the recommended baseline video codec standard for HTML5, against Apple's aggressive protest. Now, Nokia seems to be seeking a reversal of that decision: they have released a position paper calling Ogg 'proprietary' and citing the importance of DRM support. Nokia has historically responded to questions about Ogg on their internet tablets with strange and inconsistent answers, along with hand waving about their legal department. This latest step is enough to really make you wonder what they are really up to."
I suspect Nokia and others balk at the inclusion of Ogg and other GPL standards because it would force them to give away their work if they want to support it.
There's an additional consideration which probably is interesting to Nokia - H.264 decoders for mobile devices are HIGHLY available. The same is likely not the case for Theora. These hardware devices don't have much computation power so a software video codec won't cut it for anything with decent resolution, nor is it power efficient to use the CPU for these tasks. Rather, a custom chip which can do the heavy lifting is the preferred/necessary solution. All the FOSS in the world doesn't get you a chip manufacturer who builds the silicon you need to actually have performant video streaming. Remember, when its mobile its MUCH more than just a software problem.