This is officially huge, and in many ways. It's a breaking story on Reuters right now, more here through the day I suspect... "Finnish cellphone maker Nokia Corp said on Tuesday it was buying out other shareholders of handset software firm Symbian, and opening the software for royalty-free use. The net cash outlay from Nokia to buy the approximately 52 percent of Symbian shares it does not already own will be about 264 million euros (208.5 million pounds)."
Read on in the full article.
massive. Will this mean more 3rd party s60 devices? Is just symbian base os royalty free, or s60 as well?
So what will be the new name of your website? Hehe...
There will be no more s60, or uiq, or MOAP - THAT is the big news, the symbian foundation.
This is really good news. With free licensing this really levels the playing field Google's Android, takes a potshot at Microsoft's Windows Mobile and a masterful strategy against Apple. Royalty free licensing and in two years open source is wonderful. Imaging the speed of extending options and adjustments for the userinterface. No doubt in a few years, people can select different "windowmanager" or better said GUI's for their mobile phone. Now the phones really start becoming pocket pc's.
Cheers,
Snoyt
Looks like Nokia is well on its way to self-destruction by gluttony.
luarvique wrote:Looks like Nokia is well on its way to self-destruction by gluttony.
martinharnevie wrote:I'm not sure how you translate 'royalty-free' to 'gluttony'....
If Android doesn't do well, it may well be blamed on Nokia buying Symbian to make it royalty-free.
I think it's a brilliant move; not only by Nokia but also by all the other shareholders, licencees, platinum partners etc. It's the most important development since...well...since Psion Software was spun out to become Symbian.
who is going to develop applications in symbian if its too hard
just a big flop show by nokia
This is not move against Google, it is move against whole mobile OS business! With Linux the whole OS business is going to be royalty free anyway so why not to make move now. They don't want that best mobile OS ever will dry out, they take care of their clients and developers. Very good move Nokia.
Macboy is really funny!
Tommi Vilkamo wrote:So what will be the new name of your website? Hehe...
😊 I guess we will have to wait and see. I think my brain is trying to digest the series of announcements.
Comment:
who is going to develop applications in symbian if its too hard
Who said that an application running on Symbian has to be developed in Symbian? Flash Lite, Python, Java, CSS/HTML/Javascript (aka Widget), .NET, C, etc. ... is that not enough?
Well, I suppose this kills those "Nokia is going to dump Symbian for Linux" rumours stone dead... 😊
I have to wonder, is Symbian to blame for Nokias non entry into the touchscreen market? I cant beleive nokia had problems with the hardware, so maybe its going to be vastly speeded up.
I have to wonder, is Symbian to blame for Nokias non entry into the touchscreen market?
Nokia DID enter the touchscreen phone market, with the Symbian-based 7710 way back in 2004/2005. It was entirely their decision to then pull out of it again.
Symbian in itself is perfectly friendly to touchscreens, UIQ has been touch-based since the beginning.
In fact, go WAY back, mid 90s, Psion REVO and 5/5MX/7. These all had touch interfaces and the OS EPOC32 is the origin of Symbian.
And whoever it was that said apps are hard to 'develop in Symbian' is showing ignorance. It's not difficult, different perhaps but any decent developer will have no trouble developing using C++ and the various SDKs that are available for Symbian/S60. A lot of people whinge about it, but they fail to grasp the reason that it is esoteric.
krisse wrote:Nokia DID enter the touchscreen phone market, with the Symbian-based 7710 way back in 2004/2005. It was entirely their decision to then pull out of it again.Symbian in itself is perfectly friendly to touchscreens, UIQ has been touch-based since the beginning.
But surely that wasnt nokias choice to pull out, I assume they didnt own Symbian then?
Im guessing Nokia didnt want to be using the halfway measure that the UIQ devices seemed to have. Perhaps looking for a solution more like the iphones UI. Maybe not, I was just wondering out loud.
But surely that wasnt nokias choice to pull out, I assume they didnt own Symbian then?Im guessing Nokia didnt want to be using the halfway measure that the UIQ devices seemed to have. Perhaps looking for a solution more like the iphones UI. Maybe not, I was just wondering out loud.
Actually, Nokia was a founding member of Symbian - way back in 1998 & the OS has always had touch capabilities as evidenced by the Psion ER5+ devices.
How the user interaction happens is not so much to do with the OS, more about how the UI and control framework interact. In the Symbian model, this has been firmly in the UI (S60, UIQ, MOAP) domain right from the decision to split that part off.
Anyway, that's all history now. This is a very interesting time for techno-freaks 😉
who is going to develop applications in symbian if its too hardjust a big flop show by nokia
Only 'brainy' developers develop for Symbian.
Dumbos can create iphone widgets and pay 30% of their non-existent profits to Steve Jobs Retirement Fund. 😃
Brilliant Move Nokia!!
Future started to look grim for Symbian with very less chances of just one OS ruling the whole Mobile OS market. Thanks to this announcement, now its back on track. 😊
bartmanekul wrote:I have to wonder, is Symbian to blame for Nokias non entry into the touchscreen market?
the statements made made during the press conference clearly stated that elements of UIQ would be incorporated into the Symbian Foundation code library / code line, the implication being touchscreen et al, plus the hooks required for SE / other UIQ users to continue using UIQ code ontop of the current Symbian OS - and the new / final release that the foundation takes ownership of.
given the nature of having three different UI companies - all with thier own licensing issues / code librarys / tools suppliers / bit's of odd code within their implementations - it's going to take time to assemble a foundation thats universal and clean, the Symbian CEO alluded to that in the press web cast as well.
I think it's a great move for the platform.