Nokia is taking back the Symbian platform. On Monday, the handset maker announced that it is taking control of the Symbian operating system about 18 months after the Symbian Foundation was first set up.
Nokia’s control will begin next April, and the foundation, which is composed of companies that use the platform, will become a licensing organization. Tim Holbrow, executive director of the Symbian Foundation, told news media that there has been “a seismic change in the mobile market, but also more generally in the economy.” As a result, he said, the structure where the foundation guided the Symbian platform “is no longer appropriate.”
‘Unlikely’ Employees Needed
The foundation’s role will be so diminished, Holbrow said, that it is “unlikely” any employees will be needed at that organization.
The purported aim of the foundation was to create an open-source operating system in the hope that it would find broad acceptance among device makers. As with Google’s open-source Android platform, this meant that any manufacturer could modify the source code.
But Symbian’s world market share is shrinking. Industry research firm Gartner said in September that Symbian’s market share in 2009 was 46.9 percent, still the top global mobile operating system. But that share is shrinking, and Gartner projects that Android will match it by 2014, with both platforms having about 30 percent.
In setting up the foundation, Nokia spent about $365 million to buy out other owners of Symbian, and then it enlisted the support of major players. Initially, these included AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, and Vodafone.
One by one, most of the backers dropped out. About a month ago, both Samsung and Sony Ericsson dropped support for Symbian. Neither handset maker was hugely invested in releasing Symbian devices, but they helped to broaden the base of the…