Symbian Foundation opens source code to attract device makers

The Symbian Foundation has opened its source code to encourage more device manufacturers to build devices that incorporate the operating system.
The Symbian platform is more than 10 years old and still leads the OS market as far as the number of devices using it, with more than 330 million devices running the Symbian OS. However, the platform is losing marketshare and mindshare to OSes from Apple Inc., Google Inc. and Research In Motion Ltd. Because of that, Nokia bought out the rest of the Symbian contributors in 2008 and promised to open the platform and formed the foundation. Making the source code available for free could make it more attractive to device makers, especially those in the emerging consumer electronics devices category.
Opening up the source code, and being transparent in how the OS will move forward, could attract more device manufacturers, including nontraditional handset manufacturers, to choose the platform as they build products, said Larry Berkin, Symbian’s head of Global Alliances, who also leads the foundation’s North American efforts. Opening the source code also should stimulate Symbian’s efforts in North America, a region where the platform has been slower to take off.
Berkin said he is excited the foundation managed to open the platform four months ahead of schedule, considering its scope.
“The development community is now empowered to shape the future of the mobile industry, and rapid innovation on a global scale will be the result,” said Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation. “When the Symbian Foundation was created, we set the target of completing the open source release of the platform by mid-2010 and it’s because of the extraordinary commitment and dedication from our staff and our member companies that we’ve reached it well ahead of schedule.”
Symbian’s board of directors are from AT&T Mobility, Fujitsu Ltd., Nokia Corp., NTT DoCoMo Inc., Qualcomm Innovation Center Ltd., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, ST Microelectronics NV, Texas Instruments Inc. and Vodafone Group Services Ltd.