OStatic

Matt Asay and IBM's Savio Rodrigues have a couple of interesting posts up today on the topic of open source and mobile technology. RIM needs more open source argues Rodrigues, in reference to Research In Motion, which is behind the BlackBerry. Asay points out that the future of mobile, however, will be owned by the company or project that best appeals to developers, especially open source developers. From my perspective, that's true at both the software platform and application levels.

With the announcement of today's deal between Nokia and Microsoft, which will see Microsoft adapt its Office applications for Nokia smartphones, one has to wonder how focused Nokia really is on its execution of plans for an open source Symbian operating system.?Symbian remains a dominant smartphone operating system, and the open source version of it is heading into beta testing.?Nokia, which is backing the development of the OS, with the help of a huge investment from the European investment bank,?retains top market share in the smartphone market, but is displaying increasingly mercurial and questionable decision making with its smartphone strategy.

Nokia has just reported that it has received a $630 million loan from the European Investment Bank to help it develop the Symbian operating system and stay relevant in the increasingly competitive mobile operating system war. Looks like Nokia's move last summer to buy out the remaining shares of Symbian for $410 million was more prescient than many people realized. Along with that move, Nokia also put the Symbian operating system on an open source course. Just this week, at the Mobile World Congress in Spain, vendors lined up behind Symbian, LiMo's Linux-based operating system, and Android. $630 million is a lot of money. Will it change Symbian's fate, and how does it affect LiMo and Android?