Samsung has licensed Symbian OS for a new line of PDA-enabled mobile phones. Now all five of the major mobile phone manufacturers have licensed the OS, though only Nokia has released a major handset running Symbian. Samsung will release a phone that uses Nokia’s Series 60 user interface. Some handset manufacturers have licensed more than one OS. Samsung has licensed OSes from all three major makers: Symbian, Palm, and Microsoft. A ZDNet article and and PC World article have more. Update: A PC World article reports that the first Microsoft powered smart phone has been launched by European carrier Orange SA. AT&T will be the first US-based company offering a Microsoft-powered phone, in mid 2003.
Sure, it might be small, new, and not at all an enterprise thing yet, but 2 weeks with my Sidekick/Hip-Top has convinced me that Danger is onto something. Is the market really already closed to new competitors?
i think that both carriers and handset makers both want to support a number of Operating systems, including proprietary ones. Thus the fact that samsung is supporting symbian is expected. Palm needs to raise it visibility in that market. I wonder about symbian. Everyone is licensing the nokia series 60 UI which rides on top of symbian. Nonetheless, the series 60 support is making it look like nokia is symbian and that is bound to stir some more resentment in the symbian coalition. MS is already capitalizing on that fact and i’ll bet they will continue to.
I have to say that symbian smells of market restriction to me, and this marks the first time that i am relatively happy MS is in a market. MS will play hard ball with MEN (motorola, ericsson, nokia)plus siemens and panasonic and that is needed.
the cellular industry in general needs some new blood. I tend to wonder also how long MEN + will be able to dominate this market. Much of phone design is outsourced these days, including the aesthetics. The hurdles to entry into that market are lower than they were, though granted still not PC low. Just look at danger and handspring they got in, and they are hardly giants.
> AT&T will be the first US-based company offering a Microsoft-powered phone, in mid 2003.
http://www.t-mobile.com/products/overview.asp?phoneid=163904
They’ve meant different mods of the same OS.
You’re right, I know that T-Mobile and SprintPCS both offer PocketPC-based phones/handhelds. I’ll change the posting to clarify that I meant the Microsoft Smartphone software-powered phone. Smartphone 2002 is the specialized phone OS from MS.
i saw that phone on the infosync.no web site and i also saw the software at CTIA (cellular telecommunications industry association) conference. It is actually pretty nice looking. don’t know a thing about the reliabiliy, etc but it looks good. Symbian looks damn good too. Palm really needs to update that GUI.