Apple, Google and Microsoft moved into Nokia’s crosshairs yesterday as the Finnish company bought Symbian, the major threat to the iPhone and Android SDK’s and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS.
Installed in more than 200m smartphones (over 60% of the smartphone market), Symbian is a direct challenger to Google’s growing Android community. Apple are targeted to a lesser degree as the iPhone SDK applies to the iPhone alone, making it a much smaller competitor than Android which will come to the gPhone and other handsets too later this year. Meanwhile Microsoft’s Windows Mobile will come under pressure as it aims to get developers on board its small OS (13% of the market).
Within 2 years, Nokia & Symbian aim to make the open source OS available to members of The Symbian Foundation (currently including Vodafone, Orange, Nokia, Samsung and LG). Members will be entitled to use the OS and develop applications for it free of charge.
Meanwhile a flurry of reports earlier this week claimed that the Android platform would be delayed to 2009. If anyone is going to shake up the mobile phone market as much Apple’s iPhone has, it will be Google’s gPhone which will run Android - “the first complete, open, and free mobile platform.” However Eric Schmidt (CEO) responded assuring handset manufacturers and shareholders that the platform will feature on handsets in the second half of 2008. Whereas the iPhone has created direct competition with phone manufacturers, Google’s android platform encourage partnerships with manufacturers.
How will this affect a manufacturer’s competitive edge if phone platforms become uniform?
What sort of opportunity will this present for brands who can now easily plug themselves into the open source SDK to create engaging phone applications for consumers? A big opportunity is all we can say for now. We’ll keep you up to speed on brands getting involved here.
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Report[...] Nokia enters mobile platform war as Google refutes Android delay … Apple, Google and Microsoft moved into Nokia’s crosshairs yesterday as the Finnish company bought Symbian, the major threat to the iPhone and Android SDK’s and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS. Installed in more than 200m smartphones (over … [...]
Edwin 25 Jun 2008
ReportNokia has always been the biggest supporter of the Symbian platform, and all of their smartphones use some flavor of the Symbian OS, but it’s not alone: other companies, such as Sony Ericsson, LG, Samsung, are also using Symbian for some of their devices. Therefore, Nokia decided to turn the intellectual property of Symbian over to the Symbian Foundation, which pretty much means that Symbian is now an alliance similar to Google’s Open Handset Alliance.