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With literally all the news covering up Apple’s iPhone and the Android platform by Google, one tends to be forgetful of the fact that Nokia is by far the leader when it comes to mobile sales, it recently got big with a buy out of the location based social network Plazes, Nokia took another big leap by announcing its plans at buying the remaining shares of Symbian mobile operating system and more importantly making it an open to the developers worldwide.
Symbian, which develops mobile software for Sony Ericsson, Siemens, Panasonic Mobile Communications, already had a large percentage of its shares held by Nokia. But the current deal sets the Mobile phone giant to buy it all out in an all-cash deal for 265 million Euros that equals around $400 million. The deal is set to be finalized and a complete buy out done by the end of this year.
Now this is an interesting tip, many vendors consider this deal to help out the Symbian association in concentrating more time at development. As Soy Ericsson points out the same as it would greatly reduce the time plumbing for new applications. In a press release from Nokia’s site, CEO Pekka Kallasvuo said:
Establishing the Foundation is one of the biggest contributions to an open community ever made, Nokia is a strong supporter of open platforms and technologies as they give the freedom to build maintain and evolve applications and services across device segments and offer by far the largest ecosystem, enabling rapid innovation.
Is this in relation to the recent growth within the mobile industry with the simultaneous launch of the iPhone in over 70 countries that more or less have been the hub of Nokia’s empire? Or the Android with its first step towards open sourced mobile operating system, Nokia with its buy out of Symbian has similar plans to compete in the world market with a strategy gaining momentum with the awareness that has caught fire with the users of considering everything these vendors offer to be their own.
Om Malik in his recent post highlighted a few points on which the present mobile market is based upon or can thrive upon. A couple of points caught my attention, which were:
They subsequently can’t afford to muck around with proprietary software platforms that can take months to be approved by the mobile carriers.
Carriers want standardization because they want to deploy applications quickly, without having to test them on different handsets — a slow and laborious process.
Now my interpretation might just differ from that of the general audience. But from where I look at things, this is truly a battle the three giants are planning to lock horns at. Google with its Android platform has been long delayed but it promises users, with developers already grinding neurons to build applications for the Android based phones and then there is the iPhone. The clear edge that iPhone has over Google’s Android system is its independency over the hardware. It has its own software, its own mechanics to put its idea to work without any problems being created at seeking help from others (like vendors for Android have issues that have further delayed its launch).
It is here the third party, Nokia jumps up with the buying of Symbian and plans at making it open ended, with this, Symbian would have the software and the hardware alike to put its development into hyper drive. Allowing mobile users to modify their devices at will; would make them more interesting and even more customizable. With freedom the keyword in the modern era, this would boost up any company’s reputation and market value in an instant.
What ever the challenges are, I personally think the challenge amongst the three; iPhone, Symbian and Android would be a tough one, but none would end up loosing anything if not gain much on its competitor. The only name that comes into mind loosing big time is Windows CE, with its ‘Ah we are aloof and not open ended’ strategy.
[Original content from, Nokia, picture source Om Malik]
