LONDON, England – Early on the morning of June 26 this year I got a call. “Be at Somerset House first thing, there’s a big announcement happening”. What’s this, a new phone? A new service? No, something much bigger, and infinitely more significant. Nokia’s decision, along with the other interested parties to package up Symbian into a single foundation and make it open source. Throwing the baby out with the bath-water? Unlikely, that doesn’t happen at this level. Exciting stuff indeed.
Creating a full open mobile software platform is no mean feat. What’s more, with Symbian’s 10 year history and vast collection of existing developers, the prospects for anyone using the Symbian platform look intensely good. Of course, the process will take time, with millions of lines of code to wade through and a lot of integration work to happen, it’ll be a while yet before we see the full effect. The process is well under way though, and we’re super excited about it.
Oh, and, we can’t wait to see the first devices running the new, open source, version of Symbian.