I'm kind of new into smart phones but I just read this news this morning:
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/nokia-symbian-cellphone,news-1769.html
So can anyone tell me exactly what that means?
Open Source?
then their aim is to knobble or at least restrict the impact of Android .. Windows Mobile and other phone operating systems.
Open sourcing the OS and providing a nice set of tools (SDK) to develop programs it accelerates the development of new software for the handsets.
It also prevents the impression that the company is restricting innovation, a charge often levelled at MS and Apple.
The other thing it encourages is people to hold on to their Symbian phones or at least retain Symbian as their phone OS ..
As far as market share is concerned Nokia has no worries - Samsung is now clearly second .. Motorola LG and Sony miles back in third, 4th and 5th .. the others don't really rate a mention - especially Apple who despite all the hype are really not much more than a gnats whisker in terms of overall handset sales.
thats a brief impression of "what it means" .. 😊
Quick response thanks
Do you think Symbian (or Nokia) is doing this too late for the market?
Also, does this mean that you won't have to get apps signed?
App signing and licensing would be left up to the software maker once symbian goes open source. Most open source communities allow full access to programs and also encourage others to fix or update the software and in doing so you simply give credit to the original developer and list all the changes/fixes you've added.
Open source is great for advancing technology, but it's bad because people are not paid for their work in most cases.
waxup wrote:Open source is great for advancing technology, but it's bad because people are not paid for their work in most cases.
And in most cases it generates applications and leaves them at a '98% finished' level. It's usually not considered "sexy" to complete the apps and do the finetuning, solve GUI-problems etc...
Than you will have to be a techie (more or less) to use the applications and not seldom you are facing frequent problems and bugs.
Using Symbian (up till now at least), Windows Mobile, Palm OS... you have someone to nail to the cross if problems isn't solved...