Nokia to open and later open source Symbian
Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and NTT DOCOMO announced today their intent to unite Symbian OS™, S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) to create one open mobile software platform. Together with AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone they form the Symbian Foundation. Members will be able to use the components of this platform for free from the beginning and selected features will be open sourced over time.
This is an alternative development to Google’s Open Handset Alliance Android program, that recently was said to be delayed and then not to be delayed. WSJ also considers this an iPhone thread.
Nokia recently also acquired Plazes, a Berlin based location based social network platform operator.
Tags: Apple, business model, iPhone, mobile 2.0, open source, social networking