More companies join Symbian Foundation: New members: Acrodea, Brycen, HI Corp., Ixonos, KTF, Opera Software, Sharp, TapRoot Systems and UIQ Technology

SAN FRANCISCO — Nine more companies have joined the Symbian Foundation as its group members work toward developing an open and complete mobile software platform that will be free for its members.
Acrodea, Brycen, HI Corp., Ixonos, KTF, Opera Software, Sharp, TapRoot Systems and UIQ Technology have been added to the 40 companies that have committed to the initiative. The foundation was started by 10 board members — AT&T Inc., LG Electronics Co Ltd., Motorola Inc., Nokia Corp., NTT DoCoMo Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications L.P.,, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments Inc. and Vodafone Group plc.
“The mobile-phone industry is a very dynamic industry that continues to evolve and develop,” Mats Lindoff, Sony Ericsson chief technology officer said in statement issued by the foundation. “We are happy to see that so many developers and partners in the industry have expressed support for the plans of the foundation, as this will help drive the next level of innovation to deliver new user experiences on mobile phones.”
Each of the new members expressed excitement of joining the foundation based upon the potential of the platform and an ability to deliver devices using the same software.
“A common platform for user experience, applications and services, with broad industry governance of its development will provide opportunities to innovate and differentiate and be an excellent step in the evolution of mobile phones,” said Johan Sandberg, UIQ Technology CEO.
The announcement of the foundation was made earlier this summer and operations are expected to start in 2009. Foundation officials expect to roll out the first devices using the foundation platform by 2010.
The foundation was announced after Nokia acquired total ownership of Symbian Ltd. for a reported $411 million. The foundation was created to combine Nokia’s S6o platform with the Symbian platform into a single smartphone operating system.
Foundation members, which pay an annual membership fee of $1,500, would be able to use the foundation operating system at no charge.
The potential of the foundation could revolutionize the industry, said David Wood, Symbian VP of research.
“It’s important that the industry endorsed the foundation,” Wood said. “It has a real possibility to become an industry standard.”
Members of the foundation discussed the platform during a roundtable session Wednesday as CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment 2008 got underway. Many said they are excited about the prospects of developing the platform but acknowledge it will be a challenge because of the different solutions developers have to offer.
Christy Wyatt, who leads Motorola’s software platform and ecosystem groups, said innovation of an open-source platform is a major reason why Motorola is participating in the foundation.
“Even though open source has a lot of promise, we are in the early stages,” Wyatt said.
Various members of the foundation said the market will dictate which applications emerge on the platform. Oren Levine, a Nokia product marketing manager of the S60 organization, said there will be hardware fragmentation.
“You are going to have to do different things for different devices,” he said. “If the platform is beneficial and worth it, developers will do what they have to do.”
Roger Smith, an AT&T Mobility official, said the foundation platform would be another choice for its customers, which total more than 70 million.
“There is no one-size device that fits all,” Smith said. AT&T “will offer phones that support a number of different platforms.”
Nokia’s acquisition of Symbian is seen by analysts as answer to its competitors, including open-source Linux efforts, Apple Inc., Palm and Microsoft Corp. With the foundation, Nokia will have better control of the development of a single smartphone OS and the time it takes to get it out on the market. The move was also seen to maintain its dominant position among smartphone OSs. According to Nokia, the Symbian OS is used on two-thirds of all smartphones worldwide.
“We are pretty excited about the foundation,” Wood said. “I see lots of innovation around the Symbian platform.”