Symbian Shareholders Battle For Control

[Mike Temporale]

http://www.reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml?type=businessNews&storyID=4620586

I'm sure everyone has heard about Nokia's efforts to buy up Psion shares in Symbian. It seems that other Symbian stake holders are getting a little concerned with Nokia's attempt to gain a controlling interest in the company. Ericsson plans to increase their stake, and others are looking at doing the same. Here's a quote from the Reuters story.

"But before Nokia buys the shares, other Symbian owners which include Matsu****a's Panasonic, Samsung and Siemens, have the right to increase their stakes in proportion to their current holdings.

Those companies have said they were considering raising their stakes so that Nokia would not dominate Symbian.

"They (Nokia) must get below 50 percent, otherwise it becomes a Nokia platform," Ericsson's Svanberg was quoted as telling the Financial Times"

It's that last line that really makes me think that Symbain is in trouble. It must be very difficult to plan a feature set, or the future direction of the platform when everyone is battling like this. Without stability in the board room, they are in for a world of trouble.

[Mike Temporale]

http://www.reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml?type=businessNews&storyID=4620586

I'm sure everyone has heard about Nokia's efforts to buy up Psion shares in Symbian. It seems that other Symbian stake holders are getting a little concerned with Nokia's attempt to gain a controlling interest in the company. Ericsson plans to increase their stake, and others are looking at doing the same. Here's a quote from the Reuters story.

"But before Nokia buys the shares, other Symbian owners which include Matsu****a's Panasonic, Samsung and Siemens, have the right to increase their stakes in proportion to their current holdings.

Those companies have said they were considering raising their stakes so that Nokia would not dominate Symbian.

"They (Nokia) must get below 50 percent, otherwise it becomes a Nokia platform," Ericsson's Svanberg was quoted as telling the Financial Times"

It's that last line that really makes me think that Symbain is in trouble. It must be very difficult to plan a feature set, or the future direction of the platform when everyone is battling like this. Without stability in the board room, they are in for a world of trouble.

[DubWireless]

well it's not like this situation is going to be hanging out there undecided indefinately... it has to be decided / sorted out soon enough

interestingly enough at CeBIT last week I saw more new Symbian based handsets than Windows Mobile for Smartphone ones, so how ever this pans out Symbian will still be big competition for some time to come... at least here in Europe were it has a big foothold compared to Windows Mobile for Smartphone

.

[Mike Temporale]

Originally Posted by DubWireless

well it's not like this situation is going to be hanging out there undecided indefinately... it has to be decided / sorted out soon enough

I agree, it can't go one forever. It has already been dragging on for a while. Eventually it has to be resolved, and for their sake, I hope it's soon, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

Originally Posted by DubWireless

interestingly enough at CeBIT last week I saw more new Symbian based handsets than Windows Mobile for Smartphone ones, so how ever this pans out Symbian will still be big competition for some time to come... at least here in Europe were it has a big foothold compared to Windows Mobile for Smartphone.

All the in-fighting is expected to slow down the OS development. That doesn't mean we'll see another netscape where they don't make any changes for a couple years and still expect to be number 1. But it will pay out in favour of Microsoft in the short term.