Samsung turns to Nokia for mobile software

By Alun Williams

Posted on 30 Aug 2002 at 16:14

Samsung signs licensing deal with Nokia for smartphone software. The platform will enable mobile phone users to connect to the Net, send emails and play games.

British-based Symbian - developers of the OS found within smartphones, such as the Communicators from Nokia - will be one of the beneficiaries of the newly-signed deal.

Under the terms of the agreement, Samsung will license Nokia's Series 60 platform for its own next generation of smart phones. This software supports technologies such as MMS, Java and WAP/XHTML, and is itself built upon the underlying Symbian OS.

'Series 60 is an ideal software platform for the advanced smart phones,' says Byung Duck Cho, Senior VP of Mobile Communications R & D at Samsung. 'The licensing model with access to the source-code will give us the opportunity to contribute to and influence the platform development.'

Samsung was recently revealed as the fastest growing mobile phone manufacturer. According to recent figures from Dataquest, Samsung has seen its sales jump by 46 per cent to claim a 9.5 per cent share of the market.

Other manufacturers, such as Motorola, Sony Ericsson and Siemens - along with Nokia - are already part of the consortium behind Symbian.

The move by Samsung is somewhat of a blow for Microsoft and its attempts to move into the mobile phone software market with its Stinger software platform, which incorporates a sub-set of the Pocket PC 2002 applications.