December 9th, 2008
More on Symbian
I took a lot of heat for my recent post on Symbian, but a recent ZDNet UK interview with Symbian research chief David Wood has me asking more hard questions.
- Should Symbian really be called open source? Wood says its Eclipse license only allows code to be shared among “Foundation Members.”
- Does this mean the Foundation must approve all applications, the way carriers do now? These bottlenecks are self-defeating.
- There remains uncertainty on what to do with some developer code offered before the Nokia acquisition. Some of the problems, Wood says, are not trivial. How long will that take to work out?
- Symbian plans to go quiet until the New Year, after which it will have some “stage by stage” announcements. Where is the urgency?
- Wood does not seem to believe Android kit will really emerge. Is Motorola no longer in the league?
I think many commenters to my last post believed I dislike Symbian as a company or a project. I don’t have any feelings one way or the other. I’m a reporter looking for what works.
(Wood, by the way, is the author of Symbian for Software Leaders, available from Amazon.Com.)
What I know is that the mobile market moves very quickly. A year can see four different generations of gear released.
The move from “smartphones” to “Internet broadband handhelds” is a major sea change, and it’s possible this will slow the roll-out process. Apple has just two release cycles a year. Others are likely to move to that cycle as well.
But I don’t see anything significant coming out, based on Wood’s statements, until 2010. That’s a long time to watch Apple gobble market share, and as I said before they’re already driving down-market.
Android devices are already out. LiMo devices can be expected by spring. Who is going to wait until 2010 for a true Internet broadband device from Nokia or any other Symbian maker? (Oh yes, Windows Mobile and RIM.)
Some people, surely. Enough to assure a prosperous future?
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 12/09/08
