Symbian pins hopes on free, open-access future

LONDON, UK: Users of the Symbian mobile phone operating system, meeting in London this week, hope that making the software freely available will help it regain momentum in the battle with new rivals like Apple and Google.

The two-day conference is the first since Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, announced in June it would buy out its partners in UK-based Symbian for $410 million and make its software royalty-free to all phone makers.

Nokia decided to set up the not-for-profit Symbian Foundation and make the 10-year old operating system open source and free from the first half of 2009.

Around 40 companies have said they will join the foundation.

Symbian leads the field in smartphones -- phones that have computer-like capabilities -- but it has come under increasing pressure from Blackberry-maker Research in Motion, and Google's free and open-source Android platform.

Competitors eroded Symbian's market share to 57 percent in the second quarter, down from 66 percent in the same period a year ago, while RIM had 17.4 percent of the market and Windows Mobile had 12 percent, according to research firm Gartner.

"Being the top dog is hard to maintain when you have more and more competition," Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi said. "In the long run they will see share decline as Apple, Research in Motion and Microsoft are trying to get into the consumer market."

Symbian, which is backed by Samsung, Motorola, AT&T, Sony Ericsson and LG, has been left behind by demand for touch technology, which was kicked off by Apple's iPhone.

Open Access

Symbian's Executive Vice President of Research, David Wood, expects that sweeping away licensing fees will generate fresh excitement around the platform.

"There's been a great deal of interest from long-term partners and new partners," he said. "The biggest change is ease of access -- you don't need to negotiate a licence."

Developers will be showcasing a range of new applications at the London show, Wood said, including music, cameras and navigation.

"The location-based aspect of phones is coming alive," Wood said. "The phone can give people recommendations according to where they are.

"The next aspect is local information blending in with electronic information. You will look through a viewfinder and it will tell you what you are looking at, such as an apartment available for viewing."

Milanesi agrees that open source could generate more applications on the Symbian platform.

"Open source is a good thing -- it will lead to more services and applications," she said. "It's the applications and services on specific networks that will make a difference."

Milanesi said customers' unfamiliarity with Apple's operating system did not stop them buying the iPhone, because the technology was so easy to use.

"Symbian have to come up with something that's intuitive," she said. "The user interface is more important than the underlying operating system."