Motorola have announced that they will be using Linux in most of its mid to high range phones. You can read more on this ZDNet article. Does this mean they have finally given up on Symbian, will the Paragon II never be released? UPDATE Perhaps it will (see comments).
I'm not sure but Motorola seem to have had trod a very confused path when dealing with Smartphone technology. They own part of Symbian and have repeatedly said they were developing devices for it. They have signed to use Palm OS in smartphones but that went nowhere either. There were numerous rumours about them using Microsoft but that never came to anything. They have even produced devices using there own OS but with limited functionality. Now they seem to be trying to break new ground with Linux. Now I've nothing against Linux, I like the open source movement but I would not be surprised if they suddenly change tack again. If Symbian takes off this year then I think their will be some severe back pedaling in the Motorola camp.
However this could be all overly pessamistic and the Paragon II could be announced next week but I'm not holding my breath.
Motorola have one good feature in my opinion. They can survive being driven over by a Ford Transit Minibus. Beyond that, rubbish interface, poor graphics, [i]incredibly/[i] bad connectivity to laptops...
...bad move boys!
According to this PMN article http://www.pmn.co.uk/20030213motorola.shtml Motorola are going to announce a Symbian phone at Cannes next week but will be looking to pull out of Symbian in the long term in favour of Linux.
Michael Bordelon, Corporate Vice President at Motorola's handset division, told the Financial Times that Motorola still planned to release Symbian products, including 3G handsets. However, he confirmed the long-term commitment to Linux, saying: "Down the road we will switch everything over to the new platform for our mid-tier and high volume products."
Personally i think that Motorola have done a doosie by dropping Symbian, perhaps Nokia are getting too much control of this "open" software?
[quote="hillsie"]According to this PMN article http://www.pmn.co.uk/20030213motorola.shtml Motorola are going to announce a Symbian phone at Cannes next week but will be looking to pull out of Symbian in the long term in favour of Linux.
[/quote]
Good link! PMN are rarely wrong so I'm hopeful that this is true.
So prehaps its not all bad new from Motorola them. In fact the more I read into it I wonder if they are just hedging their bets.
They say "Down the road we will switch everything over to the new platform for our mid-tier and high volume products" notice they dont say 'high-tier'. I wonder if they are just aiming their Linux products at the same level as Nokia series 40 products and keep Symbian for the top of the range? Have Motorola specificaly said they want to stop using Symbian? If they did why bother to release a Symbian device at all? I'm sure they wont drop it if they sell a lot of Symbian handsets.
I also think the bit in the article about having to have Linux for the Chinese market is a bit of a red herring. This may be true of the desktop where a Microsoft OS represents a significant percentage of the cost of a PC but at $5-$10 per device Symbian is not much of an additional cost to a $500+ smartphone i.e. a Linux based device is not likely to be any cheaper. Symbian is also Open Source to Platinum developers, so security issues should be allayed. I'm sure the Chinese will just go for the best percieved device.