Motorola is planning on selling its 19% stake in the Symbian Consortium to Nokia and Psion. The company claims that it isn’t ending its relationship with Symbian nor will it necessarily cease to use the Symbian OS in its phones, but that its focus is on developing its Java environment, and the underlying OS isn’t that important to them. Motorola recently developed a Linux-based smartphone.
This is a real boost for embedded Linux. Motorola is betting the company (or at least the division) on it.
Why they switching from a winning solution to something eehhrr… well ehrr… not so good?
Will this phone take 2 minutes+ to start when you press the powerbutton???
Symbian has become series 60 in a lot of minds which as we all know is a nokia interface. NOkia has 40% of the market and motorola does not. Linux gives mot a cheap cost base (though i doubt that nokia pays symbian much) and it allows MOT to differentiate from nokia. It also means that mot won’t be helping spread the dominance of nokia. Motorola is better off supporting multiple OS platforms because Nokia, siemens, and probably sony-ericsson won’t and not everyone wants a symbian phone(though symbian is quite nice).
If you offer a symbian phones these days then you are basically offering a nokia clone and who wants to do that.
looks like psion and nokia go a bargain to me…
Symbian devices are already grabbing market share, and don’t have any real competitors at the moment (the rare few MS smmartphone are hard to find and don’t come close).
Motorola isn’t really dumping Symbian for Linux as much as it is for Java. Linux is something for java to run on top of that they don’t have to think about much.
While I realize you’re probably a troll, and we shouldn’t feed the trolls, I think this needs to be brought out.
The version of Linux Motorola is using will be similar to the version that’s running on several Linux-based PDA’s. I have toyed around with a few of them, and I can tell you first-hand that they power-up in far less than 2 minutes. My Sprint (Samsung) phone takes longer to power-up than these PDA’s do, and I’d be willing to bet the Motorola phones will perform in a similar fassion.
Any PDA will likely boot up quicker than the average phone, as the latter has to perform a host of addittional functions, of which some are totally indipendent of the CPU power, such us network uplink and various negotiations with the VLR and HLR (visitor location register, home LR). So don’t be too willing to bet when it comes to technology you know nothing about.
If anything, except for the Zaurus, the Linux PDAs have been an embarrassement.
that people in Asia get the Motorola A760 and us in North America don’t (not for a while at least). I had to order mine through a friend. Crud.
You suggest that in the minds of users, Symbian == Nokia. I very much disagree:
I don’t think that users know why operating system a phone runs. Symbian are deliberately not advertising themselves to end users at all. For programmers and analysts a common platform is a good thing: for the end user, they don’t understand the terminology anyway. And why should they?
As we all know the Symbian OS is very modular, including the user interface API. There are two main contenders, with the opportunity of any licensee to create/sponsor more:
* Series 60 is for traditional numeric-keypad-phones. It is designed to work with one hand. It was mostly sponsored by Nokia, who now own it.
* UIQ is for larger touch screen devices without keyboards: more equiv to a PDA. It was mostly sponsored by Ericsson, but UIQ is still owned by Symbian.
* Techview is more in line with the old Psion organisers, and is where Symbian came from. Don’t know of any devices with it; it is more of a reference.
Obviously it makes sense for some vendors to license both UIQ and Series 60 if they are making different devices with different input paradigms for different segments etc.
I think that Symbian shares are a good measure of the market shares of the investing companies, or at least their aspirations!
And finally the whole ‘openess’ of a phone (i.e. the control the end user can exert over the configuration and the installation of 3rd party extensions/apps/games) is not a function of the operating system, but of the channel you buy the phone through. You can run 3rd party apps on a Nokia or SE phone only through their choice and the choice of the carriers who bundle the phones. Don’t assume that a Linux phone will be ‘hackable’ until you see it..
and a even more final note, it should be pointed out that the A760 isn’t using a numeric-keypad-oriented user interface kit… so no royalties to Nokia on it I shouldn’t think..
*damn damn damn* note obvious moto-mixup of phone names in post above
*shameful lack of proof-reading blamed*
I wish apple would buy that 19%
It’s one step closer to developing complete interoperability with symbian based devices…and who knows…maybe an apple PDA down the road
Nice,
Nokia has 40% market share and nokia has also been the main company pushing the symbian flag. For motorola it is not preferable to follow the same path as nokia. If they do that then they don’t build any differentiation. With linux they can offer differentiation, at least for now. Differentiation is very important. Smart phone shipments are still pretty low so my guess is that those are early adopters buying them and they probably know they are using symbian.
Mini-me
Apple doesn’t need symbian or a role in a consortium to develop a PDA. Apple is quite capable on its own. Some day PDA’s could start running mainstream apps (provided the screens are bigger) and actually replace some desktops. Knowning that threat is a possibility, granted a long-term one, why would apple support symbian?
‘Differentiation’ as in name or as in feel?
The moto symbian device is not at all like the series 60 devices in appearance, usage or otherwise.
Common codebase (but in this A920 vs. Nokias case not user-interface-codebase) helps stability, it helps 2nd and 3rd party developers, and so it indirectly enriches the user experience – but it doesn’t require the user to understand any of this.
How is going Linux (and offering the platform for license to anyone who wants to build on it) differentiation from other linux PDAs and phones?
Does anybody know if there are sellers in Asia that will
ship to Europe?
Thanks
Dan