Sony Ericsson joins Open Handset Alliance (Android)

[Rafe]

Sony Ericsson today announced it is joining the Open Handset Alliance (OHA). OHA is the group behind the Android platform championed by Google. Sony Ericsson says its membership will 'complment its existing Open OS strategy which is based on Symbian and Windows Mobile'.

Read on in the full article.

[chlettn]

I wonder if they'll keep using all three smartphone platforms. Developing and maintaining 4 platforms (counting SE's own featurephone OS as well) seems a bit much for a company of SE's size...

[JimH]

Looks like they're trying the Motorola strategy of jumping onto every available bandwagon. Look how well that's played out for Motorola...

I'm starting to getting seriously worried about the future of SE, it appears that there's no-one awake at the helm.

[ares]

Well...Samsung does the same, with good results...so we shall see

Have to agree with JimH, this smells like Motorola's panic-stricken move from OS to OS in an attempt to revive their fortunes. SE might need to hedge their bets (after betting on the wrong Symbian horse), but 3 operating systems seems like they are spreading themselves a little too thin.

Good idea. Android will be better for SE than the Nokia controlled touch S60 mess in the "open" Symbian.

[rbrunner]

Looking at the performance of SE in the last few years, I come to the conclusion that even managing *two* OS's (proprietary feature phone + UIQ) seemingly was too much for SE's management. The had a technological lead of several *years* in the realm of one of today's hottest technologies - touchscreen-based UI's for smartphones - but could not get the thing to fly. Nokia had to give the poor victim (UIQ) the finishing blow.

And now those SE managers are "excited" about the prospect to juggle four OS's at the same time? Well, yes, if nothing else this will get pretty interesting.

Is it just my imagination, or have troll comments risen sharply since the iphone was announced? I always hoped the mobile space would remain free from the horrific quagmire that surrounds console threads, but it seems to be that there are those with no interest in a particular site, but will visit it for the purpose of trolling. However, Steve, you would be in a position of authority on this one, have you noticed any change in the random negative symbian remarks on these forums since the iphone announcement? Or is this something that has always been occurring?

[ogami_ito]

In the longer run (1 year plus), Android posses the biggest threat to Symbian...for greater a threat than Apple with its proprietary locked-down product, and WinMo, which currently lags behind all. But as for SE, they have not shown skill and prowess lately. SE adopting Android is less a threat than, say, if Samsung or LG adopts it. Or if 10 different no-name Chinese companies learn how to make decent phones and market those to the World. And that is where Symbian needs to focus in order to head-off Android.

[snoyt]

Originally Posted by ogami_ito

In the longer run (1 year plus), Android posses the biggest threat to Symbian...

Agreed, luckily Symbian is nearly open source. Then again. Linux phones might even annex those attractive parts of Symbian for it's own code and vice versa. No doubt in the long run we won't know and care what was there first, the chicken (Symbian) or the egg (Linux). With the chastity belt off for Symbian, who knows what childeren are born. No doubt the mobile game will be in the future about standardisation, supplemental software and GUI implementations. I presume Microsoft will go Linux (they will never admit to Apple's choice being better) with Apple having chosen FreeBSD (used for OS-X) . The most mature OS's will rule the world. In other words some flavor of Unix.

[slitchfield]

Re: trolling. Trolls have always been around, though yes, there's been some increase since the iPhone was launched. But, even as a Symbian fan, I can appreciate that the iPhone is pretty wonderful in its own way - so in some respects some criticism from the iPhone world is actually worth listening to.

As usual, these things come down to common sense. Realising that no one device is perfect, that all have major flaws and that there's more to life than phones. 8-)