Vodafone present at birth of the Symbian Foundation
25 June 2008
Vodafone is a founder member of the non-profit Symbian Foundation, which melds the Symbian OS handset platform with the three related user interfaces — Nokia’s S60, Sony Ericsson and Motorola’s UIQ, and NTT DoCoMo’s MOAP — into a new unified “open mobile software platform”. The Foundation is expected to come into being in the first half of 2009, which will follow Nokia’s €209m (£165m) buyout of its partners at Symbian Ltd.
“ Vodafone believes this is a significant step in driving mobile innovation for the internet, as well as creating a richer mobile experience for our customers. We have been challenging the industry to reduce complexity and focus on fewer operating systems. This step will help to drive even faster innovation, as well as enable operators to accelerate time-to-market for compelling and varied new services. ”
— Jens Schulte-Bockum, Global Director of Terminals, Vodafone Group.
The interface players form the core of the Foundation, initially joined by AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, and Vodafone. The Foundation is open to new members.
“ A full platform will be available for all Foundation members under a royalty-free licence, from the Foundation’s first day of operations. ”
— Symbian Foundation.
The Nokia buy-out of Symbian will enable it to inject its intellectual property into the new Foundation, and the vendor will apparently contribute all Symbian OS and S60 technology to the Foundation, while DoCoMo, Motorola and Sony Ericsson have expressed an “intention” or “willingness” to contribute at least some of their respective UIQ and MOAP technologies. The combined platform will then be further developed through “collaboration”, with “selected components available as open source at launch”.
“ [The Foundation will] work to establish the most complete mobile software offering available in open source. This will be made available over the next two years and is intended to be released under Eclipse Public Licence (EPL) 1.0. ”
— Symbian Foundation.
“ Establishing the Foundation is one of the biggest contributions to an open community ever made. Nokia is a strong supporter of open platforms and technologies as they give the freedom to build, maintain and evolve applications and services across device segments and offer by far the largest ecosystem, enabling rapid innovation. Today’s announcement is a major milestone in our devices software strategy. ”
— Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Chief Executive, Nokia.
The news in interesting on a number of levels, including:
- S60 is one of Vodafone’s four core preferred high end, “open system” (smart device) handset operating platforms. Its presence in the Foundation suggests this may continue with the new construct, and in doing so could extend the preferred platform status to vendors beyond Nokia and its licensees (LG and Samsung). The other preferred platforms are Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry (both proprietary) and open-source Linux. Vodafone is also a member of the Linux Mobile (LiMO) Foundation, which, interestingly, shares seven of the Symbian Foundation’s nine members — AT&T and Nokia are not LiMO members — and there is also membership overlap with Android.
- Does formation of the Symbian Foundation increase the chances of Vodafone adopting Symbian OS as the platform of choice for its own range of high-end handsets, the first of which is expected fairly soon? Previously, Vodafonewatch would have tipped Windows Mobile as the frontrunner. Although formally backed, Vodafone has yet to ship Linux handsets in any known quantity, and creation of the “open” Symbian Foundation could extend this, since the Group may no longer feel the need to exploit Linux to keep handset vendors “honest”. It will also be interesting to learn whether DoCoMo’s presence indicates a change in its support for Linux, which has been tangible and pioneering (and has involved utilising MOAP). Commentators typically identified Google (Android) and Microsoft (Windows Mobile) as most threatened by the Symbian Foundation.
“ There is no question that this is a direct challenge to Android and its open source roots. Given that a number of platform companies who are founders of the Symbian Foundation are also part of Google’s Android program (e.g., Motorola, Samsung), it will be interesting to see if the commitment to Android remains as firm as when Android was first announced and hailed as the next great hope for mobile devices. ”
— Jack Gold, J Gold Associates.
“ This puts a lot of pressure on Microsoft right at a time when they are trying to really push into the consumer space. ”
— Carolina Milanesi, analyst, Gartner.
“ Openness fosters innovation, benefiting consumers. We’re very pleased to see other major players in the mobile industry moving in this direction. ”
— Google statement.
- The Symbian OS dominates high-end devices, but its market share has been steadily eroding and its most recent key performance indicators were disturbing. It appears to be facing at least three major challenges: domination by Nokia in terms of shipments and ownership; competition from the nascent “open” platform of mobile Linux, as currently personified by Google’s Android initiative; and the danger that it was being sidelined as an impressive feature-phone platform while the highest-end devices evolve into mobile computers, which require more powerful operating platforms, such as Linux (and, possibly, Windows Mobile). Although Apple might argue otherwise, its iPhone shares a common heritage with Linux (through UNIX), meaning that it is also well placed to compete as a mobile computer. Motorola and Palm are also backing Linux strongly. Creation of the Symbian Foundation appears to go some way in tackling the first two challenges — Nokia’s domination of Symbian OS and competition from “open” Linux — but it could still leave Symbian hitting a technical ceiling. Vodafonewatch has for a long while shared the strong suspicion that Nokia is preparing to embrace Linux, and creation of the Foundation does not automatically change that, but it does raise the new question of whether Symbian might learn to embrace — or at least coexist with — Linux. BlackBerry is another platform that could quickly hit its technical limits in an age of mobile computers, although its Java-based third-party development environment currently appears to work well for many software developers, and there have been rumours that Research In Motion is working on a Linux-based successor.
“ This is a market-making move and looking at it as a response to anything would not do justice to what we are doing. ”
— Kai Oistamo, Vice-President, Nokia.
“ Mobile phones have turned into sophisticated multimedia computers and smart phones continue to grow in popularity. The Symbian Foundation will reduce fragmentation in the industry and holds the promise of incorporating leading technology and the most mature software into a unified platform for the entire industry. This will create an environment that will encourage and enable developers to build compelling applications that will positively affect our customers’ lives and support AT&T in offering its differentiated services to consumers. ”
— Kris Rinne, Senior-Vice President, of Architecture and Planning at AT&T.
- Arun Sarin, Vodafone’s Chief Executive recently called for a consolidation of handset device platforms, from perhaps 30 (many Linux-oriented) to no more than five, and the Group is to an extent already walking this talk with its four preferred platforms. Creation of the Symbian Foundation appears to heed this call.
“ The complete, consistent platform that the Foundation plans to provide will allow manufacturers to focus on their unique differentiation at a device level. Sony Ericsson believes that the unified Symbian Foundation platform will greatly simplify the world for handset manufacturers, operators and developers, enabling greater innovation in services and applications to the benefit of consumers everywhere. ”
— Dick Komiyama, President, Sony Ericsson.
- The contribution of the three user interfaces to the Symbian Foundation, S60, MOAP, and UIQ, could mark a reversal in what had seemed to be a growing trend for handset vendors and operators alike to develop differentiators by investing in their own, potentially cross-platform device interfaces. While Vodafone has been indicating a preference for customisation and stylisation (‘widgets’ and ‘mashups’ are its current buzz words), DoCoMo has (expensively, in Vodafone’s view) been ploughing ahead with MOAP, while Samsung was expected to show its own interface later this year. Now, however, interfaces appear to be consolidating and, in doing so, would seem to be moving towards Vodafone’s preferred practice.
Further reading
- ChannelWeb, 24 June 2008
- NTT DoCoMo, 24 June 2008
- Daily Telegraph, 25 June 2008
- Financial Times, 25 June 2008
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