Richard Bloor, a new addition to the AAS editorial team, recently talked to Thibaut Rouffineau, from the Symbian Foundation, on a range of topics including the challenges and opportunities in setting-up to support developers, how developers might contribute to the platform and the role of academia in the software industry.
Fujitsu and NTT DoCoMo today announced they had localised the FOMA F905i handset for the Taiwanese market. The F905i, which runs MOAP on Symbian OS, is the first such handset to be made available outside Japan. The phone will be available on Far EasTone Telecommunications' (FET) network. The F905i features a 3.2 inch WVGA screen, 3.2 megapixel camera and allows input via the Traditional Chinese character set.
Yes, yes, MOAP is being rolled into S60 as well in the future. But in the meantime, hardware continues to be released. Launched yesterday were the NTT DOCOMO PRIME series SH-03A, which is made by Sharp, has a touch screen and an 8 megapixel camera, plus the STYLE series F-02A, which is made by Fujitsu and is fully waterproof.
In All About Symbian Podcast 99 (Insight #46) we talk about the N96 which has received mixed reviews from initial users. In the second half the podcast Ewan provides his first impressions of One, the latest N-Gage game, before we move on to discussing manufacturer commitment to the Symbian Foundation and what the future may hold for UIQ.
In All About Symbian Podcast 98 (Insight #45) we are back from last weeks Symbian Smartphone Show at Earl's Court. There some discussion on the feel and size of the show, Symbian Foundation related announcements, and the start of our run through of some of the devices and demos we saw.
There was always going to be one big topic for in-depth discussion in the latest AAS Insight Podcast - the announcement of the Symbian Foundation. Rafe and Steve are joined by Stefan and Ewan to talk over the ground-breaking news, and shoot a bit of Midnight Pool into the bargain.
In another of our regular podcast interviews, Ewan Spence talks to David Wood, EVP Symbian, on some of the finer details on the Symbian Foundation. Launched ten years to the day after the announcement of Symbian, Wood discusses a number of issues around the new strategy of the Symbian partners.
The Symbian Foundation website is now online, and carries a few more details on the project. The big news is the commitment to move the platform to be open source (using the Eclipse Public Licence) and have this freely available to all. The foundation itself is set to commence operations in the first half of 2009, and the annual membership fee will be $1500. Until the open sourcing, membership will be the route to obtain the platform royalty free for device manufacturers. Naturally, membership is not required to develop for the platform, that remains open to all, just as it is now.
In AAS Insight #28 Rafe, Ewan and Steve discuss some of the news from the past week including Trolltech, Mail for Exchange 2.5 and the Symbian Smartphone Show before moving on to the general waffle topics: firstly S60's increasing integration with the PC and web, secondly smartphone statistics and definition.
Symbian today publish its first set of 2008 results, which showed shipments of 18.5 million devices in Q1, a year on year increase of 16.5%, a figure which suggests a flattening of device shipments. This takes total Symbian OS device shipments to 206 million. There was also a 92% growth in consultancy service revenue to £4.8 million driven demand for services from 'a broader and deeper range of customer mobile phone products in the pipeline'.
Yesterday Adobe announced the details of the Open Screen Project. This will see Adobe, in conjunction with partners, create a consistent 'rich Internet experience' across televisions, PCs, mobile devices and other consumer electronics using future evolutions of its Flash and Air platforms. Adobe will open up Flash and Air by releasing more technical information and removing license fees and format restrictions for Air and Flash.
NTT DoCoMo has announced it will develop an Operator Pack for FOMA handsets. This will result in the adoption of a global software platform across the FOMA range of devices. The Operator Pack will reduce development costs and speed time to market, it should also make it easier for the manufacturers to offer phones (variants based on Japanese FOMA models) to overseas markets. Operator Packs will be developed for both the Linux (LiMo compatible) and Symbian OSs.
Mitsubishi is to close its loss making mobile handset business with employees being reassigned to other areas of the company. Mistubishi currently makes phones for Japan's NTT DoCoMo FOMA network; the handsets use the MOAP-S (MOAP on Symbian) software platform. Handset shipments to NTT DoCoMo will halt by September. And so we bid goodbye to another Symbian licensee. Read on for more details.