Subtitled: “good luck with that”
I’ve addressed Mobile Phone Operating Systems before, concluding that it’s a rapidly developing (and awesome) market with the iPhone, Windows Mobile, and Google’s Android. Well during the Boston Gadgetry Meetup last month the group pretty much only talked about how the Palm OS is barely even mentioned anymore.
Well it turns out that there’s an OS sibling neglected even worse than Palm: Symbian. You know Symbian? That functionally ugly operating system that mainly resides on Nokia phones? Well, in all fairness if you haven’t used a Nokia then you likely didn’t know Symbian even existed. And even if you owned a Nokia, you might not have known you were using the Symbian OS.
As the story goes, yesterday Nokia (the hardware manufacturers behind such such horrible products as the Ngage, the E90 Communicator, and the 7380 Fashion Phone, as well as such beauties as the N95 and … well, that’s it) bought the Symbian Operating System. The goal behind all this (as the Engadget post will tell you) is to open source the OS to make it competitive with the rest of the market.
What does this mean? “Open Source the OS” refers to opening up the code so that software developers can build things for it. Exactly the way Google’s Android is set up. And the way (sort of) that Apple’s iPhone OS is (marketing itself as…). By opening up, it invites developers to actually make it better. This has been a hugely important push for Android in competing with Apple, while Apple pushes to compete with WinMo and Blackberry’s OS.
What do I think of this? First, I think it’s good. All operating systems should be open for development because ultimately it will make better products for the end user. BUT I’ve argued before that the mobile development community is already far too segmented. There are too many options for good developers out there that to build an application to reach the masses, you’d need to recreate it for each OS… or more likely- it will really only be built for one and the public will miss out on it.
What would I like to see happen? Nokia to drop Symbian and make Windows Mobile phones! As ugly as hell as some of Nokia’s phones are, these guys aren’t afraid to push the envelope to make crafty devices. The Nokia N95 is, and as a loyal HTC fan I hate to say this, the BEST hardware in the American market. It has a 5mp camera, impressive 3G chip, and a solid chunk of memory. But it runs by far and away the WORST operating system.
Well anyway, this is what I’ll discuss tonight at the Gadgetry MeetUp tonight at the Hill Tavern in Beacon Hill. If you want to attend, RSVP on the page there, or shoot me an email. I’d love to hear an argument about how the hell anyone expects Symbian to compete- open or not.
UPDATE: TechCrunch just copied my post… but with much better detail and factual coverage read it here
