Here we go again- another post about mobile OS’s. But how could I resist while Symbian is bleeding and no one (Nokia) seems to be trying to do anything about it? 

Over the last several years, Symbian has been the most widely deployed mobile OS, and until recently, Blackberry and iPhone have been like flyspecks on the wall (and still are in some markets). As I have stated before, this is changing with better usability (iPhone), increased openness (Android) and the proliferation of application development (on Apple Store, Windows Mobile and Android).  It is this last point which makes me wonder if Symbian’s future is even bleaker than indicated in the latest Gartner projections (I also happen to think RIM is in trouble, especially if you read this article, but we can leave that for another post).  

Symbian has been struggling to attract application developers to its Ovi store, even though Nokia seems to understand that application availability will be a driver of mobile device sales and a future source of revenue.  One of the main problems is that developing on Symbian is really complicated. I have heard that it takes 6 times longer to develop an application on Symbian than on iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile. I was personally involved with the Symbian Signed process at GIPS and barely managed to survive. 

It hasn’t always been this way.  A couple of years ago, the Nokia/Symbian online developer community was a lively forum with lots of developer activity and communication. But today it is like entering a funeral compared to the Android forums. No wonder there is much less activity on the Ovi store compared to the Apple Store. 

So why are applications so important? Do most people even download more than 3 applications to their phone?  Does it matter if the Apple Store has 10,000 applications versus 5,000 at Ovi store? Isn’t it more important to have one smart business or personal application versus 100 different kinds of car racing games? 

Ovi might have a good selection of applications that meet people’s basic needs, but I suspect that the interest of developing new applications for Symbian will decrease dramatically with the drop in consumer demand for Symbian phones. I use Symbian, Windows Mobile and iPhone OS devices for work, and by looking what you can do on the new smart phones (such as the new Android) I am becoming  more convinced that the smart applications will play a very important role in the future.

I stumbled across an interesting blog on Friday and felt that I had to follow up on my post from last week. Eldar Murtazin wrote a review of the new upcoming Nokia N900, which is based on the Maemo OS using Debian GNU/Linux. This OS was previously used in the not so successful Nokia tablet (if you remember the Nokia N800 that only had WiFi connectivity).  This time it seems that the Maemo has beefed up a lot. 

Quoting Eldar regarding the new flagship phone from Nokia: 

 “A natural question comes up: how come the (Symbian) S60 platform has been put aside? It seems to be almost the ideal platform for mobile devices, as it was simply designed for this purpose. But that’s exactly the weak and strong point about the S60 at the same time. The market will require vertical OS, which can be applied in cell phones, communicators, laptops and MID devices, i.e. various device types with different architectures, performance levels and so on. And suddenly it becomes apparent that S60 is not up to the task – the only way it can be tailored for the company’s current needs is through a total reconstruction.”

It can be that Nokia has realized how much it costs to own their own OS. Given that Symbian is tightly connected to ARM and that their API is rather complex, it will be hard to compete with a lighter weight, more portable and user-friendly OS such as Android.  

So basically it means that you can be OS religious as long as it is open, easily available for application developers (has to be much better than current S60) and most important, is a vertical OS that runs on any device. So that would mean that Maemo or Android is not such a bad choice after all. Will the rest of the market follow?

I have been reading about the rumors that Nokia will possibly start using the Android OS in their phones and their newly announced 3G Windows-based notebook. 

It is interesting see that some mobile device manufactures have an almost religious attachment to an OS. For example, Apple has its iPhone OS, RIM its Blackberry OS and Nokia has Symbian. Other mobile device manufactures are more OS agnostic and are using a variety of operating systems across their lines of phones. Examples of these manufactures are Samsung, HTC, Motorola and SonyEricsson.  

The Nokia rumor indicates they are slowly moving to the OS agnostic side. Even if they only support Android for the 3G Notebook to start with, Nokia could become a rather significant Google partner at the same time that they are also partnering with Microsoft.

If we were to assume that the Android rumor is true, how would that affect the mobile landscape? Since Nokia is the number one mobile manufacture in the word, the partnership could definitely have a dramatic effect on the market. With their brand name, power and knowledge, Nokia could definitely take over the role as the main manufacture of Android phones. It could also help the company gain traction in markets that they have had trouble penetrating in the past, such as the US and Asia. Perhaps we are seeing some desperation from the saunas in Finland due to the iPhone’s popularity in US (and now in Europe). Do they think that Symbian has become too big, making it is hard to keep pace with the competition? 

At the same time, such a decision could hurt the Symbian market and affect Nokia’s overall business. Who would buy a phone with an OS that the major owner appears to be abandoning? Nokia could be putting its brand name at stake to reach new markets that are drooling for a new OS such as Android.

So, do I think the rumor is true? No. I would be very surprised if Nokia made such a drastic move and totally abandoned Symbian. They might offer their new 3G notebook with Android, but probably not their mobile phones. But, as always, I could be proven wrong. If so, we can expect some major waves in the mobile phone market.

Intel and Nokia announced a strategic relationship back in June. To me, as both a consumer and DSP/embedded development engineer, this is fantastic news. After what Intel brought to Apple’s MAC with its processor hardware and expertise, people should expect quite a bit from mobile platforms in the future. Though the announcement is fairly old news, I have been thinking a lot lately about a couple other related embedded computing issues. 

It’s not a secret that open-source computing is a big trend. Intel and Nokia’s collaboration undoubtedly reinforced the view that open source is going to expand, including into the DSP integrated development environment (IDE) arena. ARM’s latest RVDS 4.0, Intel’s latest C++ compiler, and ADI’s Blackfin IDE, among others, all either totally abandon their earlier proprietary IDE’s, or at least support the open-source Eclipse. I was amazed to see this rapid about-face, and take it as a proof that open-source technology is knocking on all doors of the development world. 

The other question that the Intel/Nokia relationship raises is if fixed-point computing is going to be phased out of the mobile world. The two biggest advantages of using fixed-point processors are relatively low power consumptions and existing smart hardware and algorithms tailored for media processing. iPhone is using floating-point ARM architectures, while BlackBerry phones use a combination of fixed and floating-point architectures. It seems to me that the design flexibility and shortened development time provided by floating point far outweigh the various advantages of fixed-point processors, not to mention the higher resolutions provided by floating-point computation. Intel is the leader in designing the floating-point processors widely used in desktops and servers, and I believe the company will certainly continue its dominance. As Intel becomes an even bigger player in the mobile space, I would not be surprised if fixed-point computing loses substantial ground in the near future.

In June 2008, Nokia announced that it would buy the remaining shares of Symbian and that the S60, UIQ, and MOAP interfaces would be integrated into a unified development platform, user interface and development tool. Furthermore, it was stated that Nokia would transfer the Symbian OS and the related patents to the established Symbian Foundation. This acquisition and open source road map must be seen as a direct reply to Google’s Android Open Handset Alliance project, which is certainly getting a lot of attention nowadays. The Symbian Foundation’s list of founding members includes major handset vendors such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola, in addition to mobile-software providers and several network operators. The initial press release also states that “a full platform will be available for all Foundation members under a royalty-free license, from the Foundation’s first day of operations.”

There has been lots of discussion and debate in this area ever since the news about the Symbian Foundation was first released. As a software developer, I want to know when the first handsets will be available, who will manufacture them, what tools and SDKs will be used, and if it will be possible to utilize any previous investments in Symbian and S60. According to Symbian Freak, the first handsets will appear in 2010, around the same time that the platform will be fully open-sourced. In addition, the Symbian Foundation states that the platform will offer compatibility with past versions (back to Symbian OS v9 and S60 3rd edition), and will have one common UI framework.  In practice, backward compatibility means that development can start today using the tools already available. This type of information is of course very positive for a company like GIPS, since we can utilize our current investments, and at the same time broaden the market space for our existing VoiceEngine Mobile for Symbian. 

Before the Symbian Foundation was formed, I would have placed Nokia (S60) in the same category as Apple (iPhone) and RIM (BlackBerry) – a mobile vendor who wants to be in control of both software and hardware. Other mobile vendors could turn to Microsoft (Windows Mobile), Google (Android) and the Linux based LiMo. Now this battlefield might have changed a bit, but I still find it hard to predict to what degree Nokia will be affected by the Symbian Foundation. Will they really move to the same side as Microsoft and Google? My guess is that Nokia will contribute with the core S60 parts to the Foundation but still maintain the existing Nokia Forum program, where 3rd party developers can apply for access to additional APIs needed to implement a given functionality for Nokia devices. Something tells me that Nokia is rather pleased with the current situation after all, no matter what happens with the Symbian Foundation platform. To give an example, Samsung licenses S60 today, but none of the available API plug-ins for S60 3^rd Edition from Nokia can be installed on Samsung devices. This means that the full value of Nokia’s version of S60 can only be utilized on Nokia hardware, which I assume will be the same even when the new platform is available. 

I don’t have an answer to the question in the title, but it actually seems like things are starting to move forward now, as the foundation is currently recruiting for roles in Technology, Marketing and Operations. No matter what happens, if one of the initial intentions was to compete with Android, the Symbian Foundation will be 1-2 years behind from the start. In the meantime, however, the existence of the Symbian Foundation will add pressure on companies like Microsoft to lower their license costs for Windows Mobile.