Nokia makes Mobile OS a commodity

BOSTON, USA: The Strategy Analytics Handset Component Technologies report, "Nokia Makes Mobile OS a Commodity: Symbian, Android and LiMo to Fight It Out," analyzes the announcement of the Symbian Foundation by Nokia, and how this deal will impact Symbian partners, as well as the competitive offerings of Android, LiMo and Windows Mobile.

"The Symbian Foundation announcement may make Microsoft's Windows Mobile consumer market ambitions tougher, but this scenario presents a good opportunity to Microsoft's Silverlight in its competition with Adobe's Flash Lite, SUN's Java and Qualcomm's BREW," commented Sravan Kundojjala, Analyst at Strategy Analytics.

"This move accelerated the inevitable move away from the base OS to a focus on applications and services."

Stephen Entwistle, Vice President of the Strategic Technologies Practice, added: "Strategy Analytics believes that the Symbian Foundation provides another compelling choice to handset manufacturers to cut their software bill of materials. Strategy Analytics also believes that this move will help Nokia to effectively counter the looming threat from royalty free mobile Linux offerings, Android and LiMo."