Symbian Foundation and Baidu
The Symbian platform has a 70% share of the smartphone segment in China. Nokia's recent commitment to TD-SCDMA phones is likely to help Symbian maintain this position over the next few years. Baidu has a 76% market share in search. Working together, the two companies will be able to have a significant impact on the way Internet services, especially in the search arena, are consumed on mobile devices in China.
A recent report estimated that by the end of 2009 there were 230 million mobile Internet users in China, representing 60.8% of all Internet users in the country; this underlines the huge market opportunity available in the country.
From the press release:
"Combining Symbian’s wireless expertise in smartphone platforms and Baidu’s R&D strength in search engines, the two will drive the joint development, integration and launch of wireless “box computing” within the Symbian platform architecture. This will enable application and web developers to incorporate robust search functionality into their applications and leverage this "platform within a platform" to expand the Symbian/Baidu ecosystem, bringing new applications and user experiences to Symbian devices and extending the reach of Baidu in the mobile marketplace."
The Symbian Foundation blog explains the box computing concept in more detail:
"Box computing is a visionary technology born of Baidu’s extensive search experience in which they found that search engine users’ needs are not best met by pages of search results that simply highlight where the exact search term has appeared on the Internet. Box computing search engines identify and connect with a vast array of functions, services and activities, and perform analysis to work out what the user really wants – and then provide them with it directly. For example, users may be looking for anti-virus software, shopping, or searching for stock. In the future, when a user enters a search term into the search box, Baidu’s box computing technology will not need to show the user the search results; instead, it will simply show the user the current stock prices or ask them if he or she wants to download the anti-virus software."
The Symbian Foundation has committed to 'opening the necessary platform technology interfaces' for Baidu to deeply integrate the box computing into Symbian's middleware layer. Both companies will jointly provide a complete box computing platform solution to handset manufacturers and operators. The technology can also be used by third party developers to integrate box computing into their applications and services. It will also allow for a single search box that can used to search the Internet for services and information as well as the content of local applications.
Monotype Imaging contributes MYuppy
As part of today's announcements (joint press conference in China), Monotype Imaging announced that is contributing the MYuppy China font to the Symbian Foundation. MYuppy is designed for high-quality display on mobile devices. The font supports the Simplified Chinese writing system and includes a set of matching Latin characters. It can be downloaded from developer.symbian.com.
Steve Martin, vice president of engineering at Monotype Imaging, said, "China represents a large opportunity for the Symbian platform. As a member of the Symbian Foundation, Monotype Imaging agreed that providing an open source font would help pave the way for more Symbian devices to be created for Chinese markets. We believe MYuppy helps to position Symbian to succeed now that the platform addresses one of the most critical requirements -- high-quality Chinese text that's both easy to read and visually appealing."