OStatic

As we posted yesterday, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and NTT Docomo announced today that they will unite the Symbian OS, S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) into one open source mobile software platform. In conjunction, a number of members have announced the Symbian Foundation, to oversee the new platform. Now, the LiMo Foundation--which has a Linux-based mobile platform that will arrive on many phones later this year--has issued a statement welcoming the Symbian Foundation. Will we in fact see fierce competition between these two entities?

Morgan Gillis, Executive Director of LiMo, said the following about the formation of the Symbian Foundation, and Symbian's open future:

"This development is not at all unexpected and we are pleased to see another organization recognizing that openness and collaboration are undeniable forces that will enable the next generation of mobile devices, applications and services. Taking Symbian out of proprietary ownership is a natural evolution for the organization because the future of the handset OS is far more about governance than technology - the role of the handset OS is now to mediate the inter-operation of diverse technologies, content and business models seeking to converge upon the device and this simply cannot happen under traditional commercial governance."

In all likelihood, an open source Symbian platform will compete very directly with both LiMo-based handsets and handsets based on Google's Linux-based Android platform. Many attendees at the Mobile World Congress conference earlier this year viewed LiMo's platform as much faster and more efficient than previous versions, and given the amount of support from handset makers, it has a fighting chance. Likewise, Google's Android platform is already seeing many slick applications arrive.

However, let's not forget that Symbian already has over 60 percent market share in the smartphone market. It's a proven quantity. Motorola, NTT Docomo, Samsung and several other companies are members of both the LiMo Foundation and the Symbian Foundation. I won't be surprised to see them show favoritism toward the Symbian platform. Furthermore, Apple, RIM and Microsoft--the players now left pushing proprietary mobile platforms--have substantial funds behind application development efforts for their platforms.

This last point is important. While the LiMo Foundation's position on the Symbian news is high-minded, I still see it as essential for the LiMo Foundation and Android to have solid amounts of money going to application developers. Apple has a $100 million fund for that purpose, and RIM has a $150 million fund.

Absent best-of-breed applications, the LiMo Foundation and Android will have a tough time against the competition. One possible wrinkle here, though, is China. China represents a potentially huge market for handsets based on open source mobile platforms, at low price points. If China adopts LiMo- and Android-based handsets in a big way, growth in the market itself could help pave the way for success for these Linux-based platforms.

• Android
• Symbian
• linux
• LiMo