Motorola To Sell Symbian Stake

[Robert Levy]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?id=646' target='_blank'>http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?id=646</a><br /><br /></div>"Motorola plans to sell its 19-percent stake in Symbian, following the expiration yesterday of an agreement that prevented the founding partners from selling their stakes. Nokia and Psion announced plans to purchase the stake jointly, a move which will make Nokia the leading shareholder with 32 percent. Motorola will remain a licensee of Symbian software, and just yesterday announced its first Symbian-based phone - the 3G A920. But the move comes as Motorola begins embracing competing systems."<br /><br />According to Reuters, "The deal will cost Nokia about 39 million pounds ($62 million) and Psion 17.4 million pounds in cash."<br /><br />Well this is certainly good news for the Smartphone camp. I wouldn't call it a victory yet since Motorola is still developing Linux-based phones and continuing to license Symbian. Regardless, this move shows that after Motorola has spent time building devices with the Microsoft platform, they have lost a significant amount of faith in Symbian.

[ben865]

As I understand it the future of Moto Smartphones lies very much with Linux and even more with Java.

Expect a few VERY interesting phones from Moto over the next year...

[Hooked]

I don't see this announcement as necessarily a negative commentary on Symbian or a positive endorsement of MS Smartphone.&nbsp&nbspRather, I think it's another case of an OS licensee thinking they'll save money by moving to a "free" OS.

They'll probably find out, like many others, that moving to embedded Linux is not more cost effective, but it may give them the ability to make custom changes which may have some added value.&nbsp&nbspThey will also gain some flexibility in dealing with the specific OS vendors and in contracting out some production.

The larger issue is that Motorola is shifting to an OS agnostic approach, and concentrating on the Java VM as its centralizing technology.&nbsp&nbspThe effect is to spread their resource allocation among vendors supporting a Java runtime.&nbsp&nbspWorst case scenario, if Motorola's Linux phone fails, they can simply move their interest back to Symbian because of its support for Java.

If MS Smartphone does not include a Java runtime, they'll be missing a major opportunity to gain marketshare from a major cellphone manufacturer who is actively seeking expenditure in other smartphone operating systems.

[David McNamee]

If MS Smartphone does not include a Java runtime, they'll be missing a major opportunity to gain marketshare from a major cellphone manufacturer who is actively seeking expenditure in other smartphone operating systems.

Not neccssarily. Not including a JVM will cause the Windows Smartphones to be ignored by phone-gamers. It seems to me that the importance of Java for Motorola is the ability to customize the user experience - something they need not do with Smartphone.