The Symbian Foundation has announced the much-awaited decision of making its code open source. Symbian3, the new version of the OS, will mark the change of Symbian from being a closed OS platform to become an Open Source platform where anyone can download and modify it for free.
This move comes after the increase in the popularity of likes of Android OS from Google and the iPhone OS from Apple who had slowly started stealing the limelight from Symbian, which was not only, a decade old - but had also started looking outdated and cumbersome. Nokia has, however, claimed that the decision to go open source was an old one that even precedes the advent of the Android platform. More than 330 million phones around the globe use Symbian, making it the largest smartphone platform currently in existence. However, its age was fast catching up with it, and with the advent of the likes of Google's Android and Apple's iPhone OS, the number of people flocking towards competing platforms steadily increased.
This is one of the most significant moves made by the Symbian Foundation, ever since it was set up in 2008. Prior to that, Nokia had bought Symbian entirely and then helped them in the creation of the non-profit, Symbian foundation. The Symbian foundation includes major players in the telecom sector including, Nokia, AT&T, LG, Motorola, NTT Docomo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone. Recently, Qualcomm too joined the fray, thereby raising chances of Nokia's Symbian phones to be launched on CDMA platforms.
This will also mark the end of life for the existing Series 60 platform that still holds on to the tag of the most used Smartphone OS platform. Will Symbian3 be able to replace Series 60? Also, will existing devices be upgradeable to Symbian 3? These are some interesting questions to which we hope to find some answers to very soon!
This move comes after the increase in the popularity of likes of Android OS from Google and the iPhone OS from Apple who had slowly started stealing the limelight from Symbian, which was not only, a decade old - but had also started looking outdated and cumbersome. Nokia has, however, claimed that the decision to go open source was an old one that even precedes the advent of the Android platform. More than 330 million phones around the globe use Symbian, making it the largest smartphone platform currently in existence. However, its age was fast catching up with it, and with the advent of the likes of Google's Android and Apple's iPhone OS, the number of people flocking towards competing platforms steadily increased.
This is one of the most significant moves made by the Symbian Foundation, ever since it was set up in 2008. Prior to that, Nokia had bought Symbian entirely and then helped them in the creation of the non-profit, Symbian foundation. The Symbian foundation includes major players in the telecom sector including, Nokia, AT&T, LG, Motorola, NTT Docomo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone. Recently, Qualcomm too joined the fray, thereby raising chances of Nokia's Symbian phones to be launched on CDMA platforms.
This will also mark the end of life for the existing Series 60 platform that still holds on to the tag of the most used Smartphone OS platform. Will Symbian3 be able to replace Series 60? Also, will existing devices be upgradeable to Symbian 3? These are some interesting questions to which we hope to find some answers to very soon!
Source -Techtree