As Symbian Aims for the Chinese Smartphone Market, Things Get Complicated
by Sam Dean - Sep. 09, 2009Comments (0)- Related Blog Posts
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The smartphone market has remained very healthy throughout the economic downturn, and it looks like the next big area of opportunity for smartphones, mobile operating systems and applications will be China. As we reported a few days ago, the iPhone is headed to China through a deal that Apple has struck with China Unicom, and China Mobile--the market leading wireless provider--has increasingly embraced the open source Android operating system. Specifically, Dell's new Android smartphones are part of China Mobile's application platform, and the company has its own Ophone operating system (based on Android).
It's already been clear that there will be a huge battle between open source and proprietary mobile operating systems in China, but now, as The Register reports, things are getting even more complicated. It seems that Symbian, the platform on nearly half of smartphones, could start gaining a Chinese foothold even before the iPhone and Android phones arrive there.
According to The Register:
"Nokia might not be as enthusiastic about Symbian as it used to be, but China Mobile is endorsing the platform to the extent of setting up its own Symbian Application Store. The deal is part of the Symbian Foundation's efforts to promote itself in China, and means China Mobile is promoting the Symbian Horizon program for application approval, as well as making Symbian applications available to its almost 500 million subscribers."
The upcoming open source version of the Symbian operating system is in beta testing now, which could mean that the biggest wireless provider in China backs two prominent open source mobile operating systems as smaller China Unicom backs the iPhone. (The open source Symbian OS also has a cool $630 million from Europe backing it.) Given the size of the Chinese market, this is one open source vs. proprietary battle worth watching, and is more evidence that mobile open source has truly arrived.
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