There's an article on Linux Planet which considers the opinion that Microsoft has abandoned WindowsCE and is allying itself with Ericsson to produce broadband mobile software. Although Ericsson have said that this has nothing to do with WindowsCE, LinuxPlanet is hoping that this news, along with the news that Nokia intends to release a Palm based smartphone, puts Symbian in Peril - though it does depend on how you look at it.

The Microsoft/Ericsson partnership is just one piece of a series of Microsoft announcements regarding its plans for mobile technology, none of which involved WindowsCE. Another of the announcements was that its the Microsoft Mobile Explorer (MME) will be device agnostic and MME (as pointed out to by the article) is a platform, not just a browser.

I've long felt that Symbian, as a mobile OS, was going to be a platform for the power user and would never be on every mobile phone. With Java and related technologies, users are going to be able to run the same application regardless of the OS and so the significance of the OS is being diminished as time goes by.

So what is Microsoft up to? It's certainly not in this to help the market, as much as it is in this to help itself. Does anybody here have any more information on Ericsson's partnership with Microsoft?

Would you run a Microsoft browser on your phone (if it were become available)? How can Symbian add value in order to make it stand out, to attract more power users and ordinary man-in-the-street consumers?

Is Nokia's decision to build a smartphone built on PalmOS that significant considering that it (Nokia) has put so much investment into Symbian and is licensing platforms based on Symbian to other manufacturers? Surely, Nokia can;t have the same influence over PalmOS as it can over Symbian?

Over to you guys? Spread your wisdom!!!!!!



Here's the article ---> http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/1337/1/