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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