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?

There's more momentum on the mobile open source front. Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and NTT Docomo announced today that they will unite Symbian OS, S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) into one open mobile software platform. In addition, the Symbian Foundation is now formed, with many prominent early members, including AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone. Nokia will also buy out the remaining shares of Symbian Limited that it doesn't already own, for $410 million. Is Nokia only aiming to stop paying hefty Symbian license fees, or does this point to a promising new open source mobile platform? What does this mean for Linux phones?

At yesterday's Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, where Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone 3G and numerous other initiatives, it became very clear that the coming battle among smartphones will be largely decided on? the basis of who gets the best applications. Applications built with the upcoming iPhone 2.0 SDK looked very mature, and there were many demonstrations showing how easy they were to create. What does this mean for Google's Linux-based Android mobile platform and the wave of Linux-based phones expected later this year?