Having lived through the PC religious wars in the 80s, when Windows suddenly came to power in one of the most aggressive pieces of marketing ever seen, we are constantly alert to similar moves that might put the handset world in the same kind of icy grip.
As much as anyone loves Google and its Android initiative, surely no-one wants to see Windows happen all over again, a move which ended up deifying a single individual (Bill Gates) and producing the richest man in the world, while simultaneously destroying most of the companies that gave us the PC revolution and stultifying initiative and innovation on the PC.
What if a single company had ending up controlling the development of the Internet in the same way? It would have been a disaster of biblical proportions. The only alternative to a de facto standard and monopoly is the rise of an open source foundation that controls standards. In the case of the Internet it was the IETF and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and that’s the model and role that Symbian is chasing, but in order to be successful it needs virtually everyone behind it.
Obviously the first and foremost move was to open the door to Google, which Symbian did in July, shortly after Nokia agreed to acquire Symbian 100% and put all of its work into Open Source by 2010, along with software assets from Nokia’s Series 60, and UIQ technology from Motorola and Sony Ericsson and MOAP from NTT DOCOMO and Fujitsu.
In the end history may not repeat itself, but it is likely that a single software platform spanning all smart phones will come into play if either side ‘ Symbian or Android (not to mention Apple) can obtain dominance, which is perhaps why they should work together, so that neither side can lose. Such a move would open the floodgates to a huge number of applications for business and consumers on a single platform, because it would make it more economic to developed and deploy over a wider range of devices.
But Google will only merge Android into Symbian at some distant point in the future, if it perceives Symbian to be gaining irresistible support, so this week, the additional of a large swathe of second generation of members to the Symbian Foundation was significant, as the cellular industry continued its campaign.
The names Acrodea, Brycen, HI Corporation, Ixonos, KTF, Opera Software, Sharp, TapRoot Systems and UIQ Technology are not all well know and understood businesses, but they have all added their endorsement for the planned foundation and promised to work with it and contribute code.
That brings the total number of companies behind the initiative to 40 since the June announcement kicked off with an initial ten members in AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung Electronics, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone.
There is a heavy Japanese and European flavor to these new members at the Symbian Foundation, and the division between Symbian and Android might even result in a geographical schism between the US and the rest of the world, although the past has taught us that the US cellular is not a big enough to support its own cellular paradigm and it will have to draw from Symbian if that schism continues.
The new members include Acrodea, which offers a photo handling system, which NTT and Sony Ericsson use; Brycen which has a micro relational database and HI Corp which offerings a 3D rendering engine ‘ all three of these Japanese.
Ixonos, which offers a cellular based risk management system is Finnish, while Korea Telecom Freetel is Korean and has a system of customizable ring back tones. Opera is of course the Norwegian browser developer, and Sharp another Japanese handset maker, one of the largest which was missing from the launch group. TapRoot Systems is the only US company, which sells embedded mobile software, especially for supporting wi-fi, while
UIQ Technology of course licenses the open software platform UIQ which will become part of Symbian, and originates in Sweden.
The Symbian Foundation says that it has had hundreds of organizations register interest in joining and so we should expect a steady stream of PR releases about new members, building up a head of steam and increasing pressure on Android and everyone else, to fall into line. The whole process will take at least a year, although devices sporting the converge software may appear well before then.
The acquisition of Symbian by Nokia is expected to close in Q4, 2008, and the contributed software will be available under a royalty-free license to foundation members from the first day of Symbian Foundation operations, expected 1H 2009 and the whole converge stack open sourced by June 2010.