The world has been waiting for an open-source Symbian mobile operating system, but it won’t have to wait much longer. The Symbian Foundation expects to have its first version ready in the first half of 2009.
The foundation is making strides and gaining more support. Symbian on Thursday announced AOL, Cell Telecom, Intrinsyc, ISB Corporation, Trusted Logic, and Xenient have added their endorsements to the 58 other companies already supporting the open-source effort.
“We are delighted with the response from the Silicon Valley community, as well as from developers around the world, to the plans for the foundation to build on the leading open mobile platform,” said Lee Williams, who has been nominated as executive director of the foundation and who was a keynote speaker at this week’s Symbian Partner Event in San Francisco.
The AT&T Connection
Even though Symbian has a commanding lead in the global mobile operating-system market with nearly half the implementations worldwide, competition is rising. Research in Motion, Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android, and Windows Mobile are all challenging Symbian on the smartphone front.
What’s more, Symbian hasn’t gained much traction in the U.S. Symbian could gain an advantage, though, if comments made by an AT&T executive at the Symbian event Thursday pan out as some observers expect.
Roger Smith, AT&T’s director of next-generation services, told the event that the wireless carrier is considering how it might standardize on only a few mobile platforms over the next few years. He cited Symbian as a “credible candidate” to be among those platforms.
Speaking of an open Symbian, Smith said, “If done well and done right, this can be a game-changing event.” It’s all part of AT&T’s move to take more control over its destiny in the mobile operating space.
A Fragmented Market
“At the end of the day, the mobile OS platform market is going…