Nokia to buy Symbian

[slitchfield]

This is officially huge, and in many ways. It's a breaking story on Reuters right now, more here through the day I suspect... "Finnish cellphone maker Nokia Corp said on Tuesday it was buying out other shareholders of handset software firm Symbian, and opening the software for royalty-free use. The net cash outlay from Nokia to buy the approximately 52 percent of Symbian shares it does not already own will be about 264 million euros (208.5 million pounds)."

Read on in the full article.

massive. Will this mean more 3rd party s60 devices? Is just symbian base os royalty free, or s60 as well?

So what will be the new name of your website? Hehe...

[ares]

There will be no more s60, or uiq, or MOAP - THAT is the big news, the symbian foundation.

[snoyt]

This is really good news. With free licensing this really levels the playing field Google's Android, takes a potshot at Microsoft's Windows Mobile and a masterful strategy against Apple. Royalty free licensing and in two years open source is wonderful. Imaging the speed of extending options and adjustments for the userinterface. No doubt in a few years, people can select different "windowmanager" or better said GUI's for their mobile phone. Now the phones really start becoming pocket pc's.

Cheers,

Snoyt

[luarvique]

Looks like Nokia is well on its way to self-destruction by gluttony.

[martinharnevie]

Originally Posted by luarvique

Looks like Nokia is well on its way to self-destruction by gluttony.

I'm not sure how you translate 'royalty-free' to 'gluttony'....

[luarvique]

Originally Posted by martinharnevie

I'm not sure how you translate 'royalty-free' to 'gluttony'....

I translate a habit of swallowing other companies left-and-right on the daily basis to gluttony by the way of equivalence. IMHO, unless you have some Plan, it is plain waste of money. And, looking at the rate at which Nokia is buying things, it is unlikely Nokia has a definite plan.

If Android doesn't do well, it may well be blamed on Nokia buying Symbian to make it royalty-free.

[martinharnevie]

I think it's a brilliant move; not only by Nokia but also by all the other shareholders, licencees, platinum partners etc. It's the most important development since...well...since Psion Software was spun out to become Symbian.

who is going to develop applications in symbian if its too hard

just a big flop show by nokia

This is not move against Google, it is move against whole mobile OS business! With Linux the whole OS business is going to be royalty free anyway so why not to make move now. They don't want that best mobile OS ever will dry out, they take care of their clients and developers. Very good move Nokia.

Macboy is really funny!

[Rafe]

Originally Posted by Tommi Vilkamo

So what will be the new name of your website? Hehe...

I guess we will have to wait and see. I think my brain is trying to digest the series of announcements.

[tote]

Comment:

who is going to develop applications in symbian if its too hard

Who said that an application running on Symbian has to be developed in Symbian? Flash Lite, Python, Java, CSS/HTML/Javascript (aka Widget), .NET, C, etc. ... is that not enough?