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According to a media report, Samsung Electronics has accepted Nokia’s offer to buy out its stake in software firm Symbian, and Nokia now has acceptances from all Symbian shareholders to sell their shares. Nokia Spokesman said, “They have accepted it”. Nokia said in June it would buy out other shareholders of UK-based smartphone software maker Symbian for US$410 million and make its software royalty-free to other phone makers in response to new rivals such as Google.
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Ramar, Chinese mobile handset producer has reached an agreement with Geo Solutions BV Business Unit who are responsible for developing the GyPSii geo-mobile social networking platform. The idea behind this agreement is to have GyPSii application to be embedded in Ramar’s soon and to release range of amsam Windows Mobile devices.

According to the terms of this agreement, Ramar will pay a license fee for the right to bundle the application on the devices, but revenue sharing from advertising income is based on the current business model used by GyPSii.

GyPSii will be available on amsam devices in both Traditional and Simplified Chinese. GyPSii’s PlaceRank and Geo-Advertising technology will be utilised to deliver highly contextual and personally relevant user generated content, regional POI (points of interest) and location-targeted advertising to user on the Ramar devices. GyPSii currently interoperates on Symbian,Windows Mobile and BlackBerry devices, as well as the Apple iPhone, along with browser-based Internet connected devices.

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The silicon valley of India is going to be the playground for the OSScamp Bengaluru Mobile! 2008. This event will be held on July 19th, 2008 and is being organized by the OSScamps Community.The topics which will be covered includes discussion on emerging technologies such as OS Development, Social Mobile, Mobile Commerce, Open Standards, Protocols, platform, Databases, Linux Based Devices, Android, Open Moko, Symbian, iphone, green phone, etc.

This unconference is being organized with the International Conference on Communication, Convergence, and Broadband Networking (http://www.ICCBN.net).

The host for this event is going to be the Indian Institute of Science.There would be about 40 campers at the event.These campers would obviously be geeks either working in or interested in Mobile Technologies.This event will act as a platform where the campers can showcase their new and innovative ideas on mobile Technologies. This camp is relying solely on the sponsors to cover the cost of the event.So as to say, this camp would be all work and no play.

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The world’s largest handset vendor’s bold announcement that it plans to buy the rest of Symbian has generated a lot of media attention, especially since the OS company holds two thirds of the global smart phone market.
The most popular analysis paints Nokia as a winner and Google as the loser. The deal is also seen as a victory for the open-source movement, with Nokia validating a business model pursued by competitors like Google’s Android platform and LiMo (Linex Mobile) Foundation.

But further interviews with Nokia and Symbian executives reveal more than a few bumps waiting in the “open” road to the Symbian Foundation.

Here are seven things you need to know in order to understand what’s behind the Nokia/Symbian deal and what it means for the industry:

1. It’s going to be a long process?
Don’t hold your breath. It will be years before Nokia can migrate all the associated properties and assets into the Symbian Foundation and then make its offerings available under the Eclipse public licence model.

Lee Williams, Nokia’s senior VP for S60 Software, explained a three-phase programme in an interview with EE Times:

In the first phase, Nokia will contribute to the Symbian Foundation—a new non-profit organisation—the core code behind Symbian’s operating system along with S60, Nokia’s user interface, middleware and everything that comes with its platform for Symbian-based smart phones. The goal is to allow handset vendors to execute their product development under the royalty-free licence programme.

But foundation members won’t be able to stop royalty payments to Symbian and Nokia until the first quarter of 2009. Those payments cover the use of Symbian’s OS, and Nokia’s S60 user interface. While Nokia wouldn’t disclose its fee for S60, mobile makers currently pay royalties as high as Rs.200.11 ($5) per unit to Symbian.

During phase two, members will start adding and integrating some assets from the Mobile-Oriented Application Platform used as NTT Do Como’s platform for its mobile phones and UIQ, a software platform based on Symbian OS, as complements to the Symbian Foundation’s offerings. This alone could take up to two years, according to Williams.

In the third phase expected to begin in 2011, the foundation’s offerings will finally start to evolve with the help of the open-source community. Development results will be released to the community under the Eclipse Public Licence (EPL).

Compared with other open-source licence models, Nokia believes that EPL, often known as a business-friendly free software licence, will make a difference. Williams said EPL can provide “proper protection for core source code,” allowing developers to do “derivative work” while giving licensees “strong ability for differentiation.”

2. No night at the Opera?
Despite all the talk about open-source development and freedom to add or differentiate on a platform, the Symbian Foundation’s offering may end up with just one target browser for smart phones.

John Forsyth, VP of strategy at Symbian, said: “One target browser covering most of the world’s phones is a good thing.” He noted that making a standard browser part of the platform will be “critical” in the foundation’s next phase. It will help to “cut tremendous cost, and it’s a healthy thing for application developers,” he explained.

The current Nokia Web browser is built on S60Webkit, a port of the open-source WebKit project for the S60 platform. WebKit contains core and components that Apple uses in its Safari Browser.

Does this mean there will be no room for other browsers such as Opera?

Forsyth stressed the strength of the open-source WebKit, while speculating that Opera may be seeking other embedded devices to promote its browser.

3. It’s all about “simplifying the software supply chain.”
The biggest issue with current mobile application software and service development is “fragmentation” of the platform. There are too many implementation paths, experts say. “We need to simplify a software supply chain and extend more value to our own products,” said Nokia’s Williams.

Symbian’s Forsyth agreed. “A question every OEM is asking today is: How do I change the ratio of commodity engineering and differentiation [of my products]?”

The hope is that the Symbian Foundation will take care of “commodity engineering.” By walking away from the current royalty licence model, Nokia hopes to eliminate “latency built in for participating in an eco-system,” said Williams.

4. Is Facebook coming to mobile handsets?
Ideally, implementing popular applications such as Facebook in the open-source model promoted by the Symbian Foundation should be simple—at least in theory.

Rather than each handset vendor negotiating individually with Facebook, Yahoo or Google, the foundation’s eleven founding members can act collectively. Along with Nokia, the members are Samsung Electronics, Motorola, LG, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, AT&T, NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone.

More important, once an asset like Facebook becomes available to the foundation, platform integration will follow for use by all members. Although Nokia’s Williams noted that the Facebook example is hypothetical, he added, “It should be very interesting.”

5. The power of semiconductor companies.
With most chip companies eager to participate in almost any mobile handset alliance, it’s no surprise to see names like Texas Instruments and STMicroelectronics among the founding members.

Indeed, observers of the latest Nokia-Symbian deal tout this as a huge win. Why?

Symbian’s Forsyth explained that the software integration necessary between silicon solutions and OS platforms is “really hard.” He added, “It has the biggest impact on the time-to-market.” Getting it right can take months of development time.

According to Frank Dickson, co-founder and chief research officer at MultiMedia Intelligence, “The major chip vendors will want to support every major OS as they cannot afford to be excluded from a significant group of new handset designs.” Obviously, OS vendors need semiconductor company support.

However, he added: “The chip vendors will not define the success. Chip companies will define protocols and standards to enable efficient implementations.”

6. Why is this open-source mobile platform better than others?
Nokia’s Williams insists that the Symbian Foundation will be a truly open foundation offering the EPL licensing model. Most important is that the foundation is built on an existing framework and is set up to exploit a collection of assets.

Dickson agrees. The foundation is “grounded with handset vendor DNA. This will be its greatest strength, he said. “The handset vendors are highly motivated to insure that they control their own destiny and thus have a vested interested in success of the Symbian Foundation.”

But the reality is that the fight has not even begun.

Dickson cautioned: “Android has Google behind it, looking to leverage the power of Internet-based services on the handset. Microsoft and Apple have powerful ecosystems and know a bit about making OS work. Linux has a rapid development community.”

Hence, the battle is far from over.

7. What’s the bottom line?
The Symbian Foundation is a huge development for the handset business. Dickson said “the implications for today are much less relevant than the implications for tomorrow.” He sees the deal as indicative of “the movement of handsets to replicate the PC model.”

This may not be exactly what all stakeholders wanted to hear, but the truth is that differentiation will be less about proprietary implementations. “Handsets will be standard platforms that run a standard OS,” said the analyst. “Differentiation will occur in form factors and applications that run on the OS.”

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Nokia Corp., Sony Ericsson, Motorola Corp. (MOT) and NTT DOCOMO Inc. said Tuesday they will create an open mobile software platform based around the Symbian operating system and the S60, UIQ and MOAP technologies.

Together with other companies including AT&T and LG Electronics, they intend to establish the non-profit Symbian Foundation, with membership open to all organizations, in order to drive innovation in mobile services.

Shareholders and managers of U.K.-based Symbian Limited, which develops the Symbian operating system for mobile devices, support the initiative.

To enable the creation of the foundation, Nokia said it has launched an EUR3.647 a share cash offer for the 52% of shares in Symbian Limited which it does not already own, equating to a net cash outlay of around EUR264 million.

Nokia expects the transaction to complete during the fourth quarter, subject to regulatory approval, after which all Symbian employees will transfer to Nokia.

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China’s smart phones had a sales volume of 6.388 million sets in Q3 2007, up 5.2 percent over Q2 2007, according to a report from research firm CCID Consulting. Sales revenue reached CNY 16.61 billion, up 11.3 percent on a month-on-month basis. The smart phone market created highs in sales volume because of promotions during the Chinese national holiday. Mobile phones with a screen size of over 2 inches acquired more than a 90 percent market share. The market demand of mobile phones with screen sizes larger than 2.4 inches has decreased due to a larger and heavier phone introduced by the bigger screen, with the market share decreasing 12.9 percent. Symbian OS acquired nearly 70 percent of the market share in Q3 and sales volumes reached 4.416 million sets due to its match with Nokia. The market share for Windows Mobile has increased with a sequential growth rate of 52 percent. The sales volume of Linux operating systems fell and the falling Linux figures is directly related to the Motorola smart phone in Q3. The market share of Motorola was 70 percent of the total Linux market. The market share of Palm operating system phones fell 52.6 percent vs Q3 2006.

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Motorola  has decided touch screens might just be a bigger part of its future. It bought 50% of Sony Ericsson’s stake in UIQ, which is based on Symbian, the platform behind Sony Ericsson’s touch screen smartphones.

Symbian shared the news today that Motorola and Sony Ericsson struck an agreement for Motorola to purchase 50% of Sony Ericsson’s ownership of UI Holdings, the parent company of UIQ. Sony Ericsson bases its smartphones, such as the P1, on UIQ, which uses Symbian’s code as its core. Nokia also uses Symbian as the platform beneath its S60 user interface, and many FOMA phones for NTT DoCoMo’s network in Japan are based on Symbian. Symbian currently accounts for about three-quarters of the world’s smartphones.

Both Motorola and Sony Ericsson agreed to develop the platform together, and will continue to license it out “on equal terms to all mobile device vendors in the industry.” That means other handset vendors who want to use UIQ won’t be locked out.

One interesting thing of note that is that UIQ is the power behind Sony Ericsson’s touch screen devices. As we all know, touch screens are on the verge of becoming the new handset design rage. For Motorola to buy into this technology could help it develop touch screen-based devices, which it has openly said it is working on, to market.

This is not Motorola’s first dance with Symbian. The “media monster” that Motorola released over the summer (the Z8) is a UIQ-based feature phone. UIQ’s code base greatly simplifies customization for handset vendors, operators and third-party developers. Whether or not Motorola wii definitively produce any phones in the future that are based on Symbian isn’t known. But it can certainly use all the help it can get to cut down on R&D costs. Any platform that is easier to develop around could help lower Motorola’s costs and possibly even speed time to market for certain products.

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Symbian reported second quarter turnover rose 7 percent to GBP 44.1 million from GBP 41.2 million in the year-ago quarter. The bulk of the revenues came from royalties: GBP 40.3 million compared with GBP 37.9 million last year. Consulting services generated GBP 2.6 million, up from last year’s GBP 2.4 million, and partnering and other services accounted for GBP 1.2 million versus GBP 900,000 in Q2 2006. Some 18.7 million Symbian smartphones were shipped in the quarter, up 52 percent year-on-year. Furthermore, 145 million cumulative Symbian smartphones shipped since the formation of Symbian and 33 Symbian smartphone models commenced shipment in the first half with 25 for use on HSDPA or WCDMA.

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Mobile phone software company Symbian Tuesday reported a 52% second-quarter increase in shipments of its smartphone operating platform, helped by the success of its largest customer Nokia Corp. (NOK) in selling high- end multimedia devices.

Symbian, which is 47.9%-owned by Nokia, the world’s largest handset manufacturer, said that more than 18.7 million handsets containing the operating platform were shipped in the second quarter. This means that more than 145 million Symbian smartphones have shipped since Symbian was founded in 1998, said the company.

Symbian revenue increased 7% to GBP44.1 million, helped by strong demand for smartphone devices in Japan, as well as the proliferation of high-speed data networks, which multimedia handsets rely on.

“We’ve had significant growth over the past few years. More and more people want smartphones and the camera and music functionality they offer,” said Symbian Chief Financial Officer Thomas Chambers in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires. “Nokia’s N-Series phones are also seeing a lot of traction.”

On Aug. 2, Nokia reported a 42% jump in revenues in the second quarter to EUR2.68 billion in its multimedia phone division, which sells N-Series handsets. Nokia’s overall Group revenue increased 28% to EUR12.59 billion.

The majority of Symbian’s operating platform sales comes from Nokia, although it also provides technology to rival handset makers Motorola Inc. (MOT) and Sony Ericsson, a joint venture between Telefon AB LM Ericsson (ERIC) and Sony Corp. ( SNE).

Symbian expects sales of its software to continue to climb at its current growth rate, said Chambers.

“The growth rate that we have, I don’t see curtailing in the immediate future, ” said Chambers, adding that rivals, such as Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and makers of Linux-basedtechnology, were still struggling to gain ground.

Symbian’s average royalty rates per unit dropped to $4.3 from $5.7 the previous year, as it lowered pricing to reflect the downward trend of phone costs in the market.

Royalty rates are a stream of payment software developers receive from mobile phone manufacturers.

Symbian is facing greater competition from Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), which in February launched its Windows Mobile 6.0 operating platform. But like Symbian - which sells the majority of its software to Nokia - Microsoft has so far shipped the majority of software sales via Taiwanese smartphone maker High Tech Computer Corp. (2498.TW).

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In 1Q 2007, 15.9 million Symbian-based handsets were shipped, representing a 35.9 per cent increase on 11.7 million in 1Q 2006.

The company has also experienced success in Japan, where 20 million Symbian smartphones have been shipped since the first 3G Symbian model shipped in 2003.

In total, 14 new Symbian smartphone models commenced shipments in 1Q 2007. Twelve models were 3G enabled and eight models were for the Japanese market.

Symbian smartphone models announced in Q1 2007 but not shipping by March 31st include the MOTORIZR Z8, Nokia 5700 XpressMusic, Nokia 6110 Navigator,  Nokia E90 and Nokia E61i.

Symbian CEO Nigel Clifford said: “We are seeing two significant areas of new smartphone growth in addition to the established multimedia and enterprise markets: emerging economies and mass market segments. Through deep collaboration with Symbian OS licensees, support of a thriving ecosystem and development of market-leading multimedia, graphics and connectivity solutions, Symbian is driving the market, enabling even richer experiences at lower cost.”

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