Symbian completes open-source switch

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 4 Feb 2010 at 08:12

Nokia has completed open-sourcing Symbian, as it looks to make the mobile-operating system more popular with developers and handset manufacturers.

The announcement marks the end of two years of work, which began when Nokia acquired the consortium behind the mobile OS back in 2008.

Nokia swiftly vowed to open source the project, and established the non-profit Symbian Foundation - comprised of companies including Nokia, AT&T, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and Vodafone - to oversee the work.

Any individual or organisation can now take, use and modify the code for any purpose, whether that be for a mobile device or for something else entirely

"Any individual or organisation can now take, use and modify the code for any purpose, whether that be for a mobile device or for something else entirely," says Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation.

The move comes as Google's open-source Android continues to gain traction in the mobile market, but Williams argues there are significant differences between the two OSes.

“About a third of the Android code base is open and nothing more,” Williams told Wired. “And what is open is a collection of middleware. Everything else is closed or proprietary.”

“Open source is also about open governance. It’s about letting someone other than one control point guide the feature set and the asset base,” he adds.

Symbian is also promising to publish a roadmap of planned features up to 2011, with contributors invited to suggest new features of get involved with development.

However, analysts remain doubtful as to whether open-sourcing Symbian will be enough to claw back ground lost to rivals.

"The fact that Google came out with a largely open-source platform from the start stole a lot of Symbian’s thunder," Ovum's principal analyst, Adam Leach, told PC Pro.

"We’re seeing Samsung go a bit cold on Symbian, and Sony Ericsson – a long time supporter of Symbian – heading in the direction of Android. I think it’s stacked against Symbian. We’re not going to see a rush of Symbian devices, the way we saw a rush of Android devices."

Leach does believe there are a few things that could work in Nokia's favour going forward. "The one thing that’s probably in its favour is Google’s Nexus One. That’s given the OEMs a bit of a kick, and shown they’re now competing with Google. That competition may make some of the manufacturers think it’s time to relook at Symbian."

He also speculated that Symbian's imminent UI overhaul could give the troubled OS a lift.