Symbian Leaves Home

[Andy Sjostrom]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.netimperative.com/cmn/viewdoc.jsp?cat=all&docid=BEP1_News_0000062161' target='_blank'>http://www.netimperative.com/cmn/vi...News_0000062161</a><br /><br /></div>Symbian Software Limited is the software licensing company that develops and licenses Symbian OS. The company is owned by Nokia (32.2%), Psion (31.1%), Ericsson (17.5%), Panasonic (7.9%), Samsung (5%), Siemens (4.8%) and Sony Ericsson (1.5%). Mobile phones that run on Symbian OS include Sony Ericsson P800 and P900 Smartphones and Nokia 9200 Communicator range as well as the 7700, 7650, 6600, 6620, 3650/3600, 3660/3620. The Symbian OS is the fiercest and most challenging competitor to Microsoft in the mobile device market. Two days ago Symbian announced that Psion and Nokia have initiated a process that will lead to Nokia buying Psion's shares in the company Symbian Software Limitied. If this process completes it will lead to the following division of shares:<br /><br />Nokia - 63.3% <br />Ericsson - 17.5% <br />Panasonic - 7.9% <br />Samsung - 5% <br />Siemens - 4.8% <br />Sony Ericsson - 1.5% <br />(Psion - 0%)<br /><br />"Under the agreement, Nokia will pay Psion an initial £93.5m in cash on completion of the deal, followed by two payments in March 2005 and March 2006. These payments are variable depending on the number of Symbian OS devices sold over the next two years, with Nokia agreeing to pay 84 pence per device. Psion said that it estimates the deal will be worth a total of £135.7m."<br /><br />This is an historic deal in the history of both Psion and Symbian. Psion's history goes back to 1981 when they developed a flight simulator for the <a href="http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=223">Sinclair ZX Spectrum</a>. They moved from flight simulator development to the development of the Organiser, a "pocket computer" launched in 1984. Thirteen years and a number of models later Psion completed what probably is their most critical product to date, the <a href="http://www.series5mx.com/">Series 5</a>. The Series 5 was a sales success and it marked the birth of the EPOC operating system. EPOC was not intended just for Series 5. Psion had plans to license it to other device manufacturers. Nokia had just released its first 9000 Communicator and moving forward the two companies found each other. The result was, in early 1998, a joint venture company based on investments from Psion, Nokia, and Ericsson. Motorola and Matsu****a (Panasonic and Technics) joined a year later. You can read more about the <a href="http://www.wirelessdevnet.com/training/EPOC/EPOCOverview.html">history of Symbian here</a>.<br /><br />If the deal completes, what will it mean? My thoughts are as follows:<br />1. Psion leaves Symbian from an owner perspective. Psion management said, just a couple months ago, that the future of Symbian is tightly linked together to the future of Psion. This is no longer true. Psion will not take any active part in moving the Symbian platform forward. Instead, they will become licensees and intensify work on their <a href="http://www.psionteklogix.com/">Teklogix product line</a>. Their baby, EPOC, has left home.<br /><br />2. Nokia steps up and becomes an even more clear driver and leader of the Symbian joint venture. In just a few months, two companies have left (Motorola and Psion). Both companies shares are picked up by Nokia, the biggest device manufacturer in the world. In other words: Symbian = Nokia. Personally, I believe Nokia will be able to innovate and develop the platform much faster themselves than having to bring all ideas to a big round table of competitors. Nokia's situation becomes more and more like Microsoft's in that they effectively can create their own vision and innovate without too much politics.<br /><br />3. Other Symbian share holders will become less faithful. Why put themselves in the knees of their worst competitors? Motorola makes devices that runs either Symbian, Linux or Windows CE. This is a strategy that will become more common in the next 2-3 years. Don't be too surprised to see Microsoft Windows Mobile powered Sony Ericsson phones within two years.<br /><br />What do you think?

[surur]

The main effect from this move would be to curb thr growth of the symbian OS. As the major stakeholder Nokia would direct its development to suite it, and make it less of a general OS. Also as Nokia competes against all the other handset manufacturers, it is less likely to address their specific concerns. This is essentially like micosoft making their own PC's and competing with Dell.

This will mean many more OEMs will move to microsoft, as at least they are a neutral uninvolved company. Ive seen many devices anouced by OEMs in China and Tiawan which look really good, and use PPC PE. They are now becoming real competition to Nokia, due to the size of the handset market in China. It wont be long before these same manufacturers start exploring the international market too.

So in essesnce this event marks the start of the end of the symbian OS, especially as a general OS, because Nokia by itself does not have the clout and market penetration to make it a standard, and if it is not a standard there is less incentive for developers to produce apps for the devices. So the vicious downwards spiral starts...

Surur

[retrogamer]

to be honest, this site is like FOX news in that there is bias from day one. how can one take you seriously for your comments regarding the competition.

Here are some of my thoughts.

MS will face an uphill battle if it want to dominate the embedded software world the way it dominates the desktop software world. Just take a look how long it took for the wince cellphone to finally arrive..

PDA is just one type of embedded system. Embedded system also needs an operating system. wince(windows mobile or whatever they call it) is what microsoft have for this market. there are others, palm, wind river..etc who really dominates? it's linux!

there is tremendous amount of growth in embedded system adopting embedded linux OS. something like 70-80%? growth rate last year. MS can only dream of those numbers..

it's projected in this decade, avg person will own upto 100 microprocessor. That's a lot of devices. each of these devices will have some kind of OS running on it. With the current strong growth in embedded linux, it's already clear linux will dominate. It would be interesting to see what happens to wince in five years.

embedded linux os is being used in everything from the next generation fighter JSF engine to smart watches, Tivo, media servers, Robots, anything you can think of.

There is no way WINCE can do the same. Because linux is open-source, so people can modify, add and remove the components/features for different applications. How do you do that with WinCE?

I'm a pocket pc user, but I am tired of reading biased opinions about the competition. If you want to make comparison, why not compared with embedded linux? you'll see WINCE's market share in so many markets is simply zero. The only reason WINCE PDAs are successful is because MS has put their weight on this market and spent huge amount of money in marketing and development. MS is now doing the same thing to the cellphone market, we'll see how they do.

[tvalentin]

Psion is deveoping a device running Windows CE.net, as discussed on the site a few months ago.
Presumably this is just a continuation of that trend of Psion leaving symbian group completely.

[Andy Sjostrom]

to be honest, this site is like FOX news in that there is bias from day one. how can one take you seriously for your comments regarding the competition.

Bias starts already at this site's URL, Pocket PC Thoughts. Just like you "believe" in Linux, I "believe" in Microsoft. I don't pretend to be unbiased and obviously and quite honestly you don't either. :)

MS will face an uphill battle if it want to dominate the embedded software world the way it dominates the desktop software world.

Quite right. Microsoft is definately in an uphill battle in the embedded software world. From a PDA market standpoint, Microsoft is growing faster than anyone else. Not so in the smartphone / mobile phone market.

The rest of your post is off the mark by miles. Architectures and software development platforms of embedded systems, PDAs and mobile phones are very different. You should not expect one operating system to dominate all sizes and form factors just because one operating system might be deployed more frequently than another in one size or form factor. Linux is not even noticeable in PDA market share. I believe, as I have said here many times, that in a couple of years it is likely to be. But not today.

Windows CE is componentized. If you want to debate this, do some home work first (http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/). Then we can play! :)

If you are tired reading biased opinions...

a) try BBC... no... CNN.. no ... IDG... no ... InfoWorld ... no Well. You pick.
b) this site might not be the right one for you. We love our Windows Powered devices and per definition are biased. 8)

[surur]

I think retro-gamer is projecting his own biases on quite innocuous comments. This story is more about symbian than winCE. Previously Symbian, as a broad software alliance of Mobile phone manufacturers, seemed to be their major competitor in the smartphone business, a market many feel will soon overshadow and out-ship all non-connected PDA's. Now that Symbian is more or less proprietary to Nokia (who while a big player is not as dominant as before) the symbian group is much less of an adversary.

Obviously on this site we feel winCE will step up and take over, but they main point is there is now no reason for the other mobile phone manufacturers to support Symbian as loyally as before.

About embedded processors, I have no idea what my watch, or microwave, or dvd player is running, but unless I can load applications onto it myself I really could not care less. But when it comes a user programmable device, I do have my preferences, and in this case winCE gets my vote.

Surur

[kiwi]

>Don't be too surprised to see Microsoft Windows Mobile powered Sony
> Ericsson phones within two years.

sweet! I just bailed on my ipaq 2200 and MS Smartphone and picked up a p900.. because I wanted a WM2003 Phoen Edition in a small form factor but they are not readily available yet by a major player... maybe in the next 18months or so.. until then,I've jumped to Symbian and will be keeping my eyes on the happenings of PPC's and Smartphones.

B

[farnold]

Don't be too surprised to see Microsoft Windows Mobile powered Sony Ericsson phones within two years.

What do you think?
What I think :?: Lots make sense, but with the statement above you're missing the point large scale, mate. MS and SONY is like fire and water - just look at game consols. If Sony Ericsson will move away from their current grounds they will move to anything what is not MS - most likely choice is Linux.

[Partita]

to be honest, this site is like FOX news in that there is bias from day one. how can one take you seriously for your comments regarding the competition.


&lt;in O really voice> shut up, shut up...cut his mic.. &lt;end voice>

heh heh, sorry can't resist that.

on serious note: eventho' the idea of symbian will slow downis a bit of a wishfull thinking in the short term since they control a huge chucnk of phone market, but Nokia sudden majority control does put into question if the alliance will hold as they envision it in the beginning. This will affect long term strategy.

[mobileMike]

Here is another article titled, "Features - Psion looks past Windows to Linux as Nokia buys Symbian" (http://www.kewney.com/articles/040209-psion.html)

The interesting quote by Psion founder, Dr David Potter:

"we see it as going way beyond Microsoft, being much wider than that. We see Linux as being very interesting, not only in terms of technology, but also in market dynamics; lots of companies want to move in that sort of area when they buy equipment these days."

[retrogamer]

I am not against anyone who say great things about Pocket PC, Windows Mobile. after all, I choose to use a pocket pc too, not a palm, not a linux PDA.

However, all those posts about how microsoft is winning and beat other competiting OS's. Then just out of fairness, please also talk about how microsoft is not winning and doing poor in many markets of embedded system.

think this way, if 90% of all embedded system use a derivative of linux OS. then microsoft will simply not able to compete with a entirely different offering based on WINCE. How do you find developers when all the developers are working with linux, and if they choose WINCE, their skills are not directly transferable to 90% of other designs.

PDA market is a tiny market compared to the cell-phone market. even cell-phone market is only a part of the whole embedded system market.

Your gaming console, MP3 player like ipod, digital camera, tons and tons of gadgets, which of those are running WINCE? sure you may not care about what OS is in there. but it's not a fair comparison if you never mention how WINCE is doing against linux

[scmok]

Embedded market is too far from the discussion. We are comparing PDA or PDA phones or smart phones. Those capable of adding of adding software by user to fit ones own needs.

In that case, only some recent linux based phones from motorola and China vendors can count. In contrast, the major players nearly all stick to JAVA. Even the Symbian and most Linux phones support JAVA. We should not count the closed systems like digital camera. Many may be developed using linux development tools, but may not be running any version of linux. In fact, most embedded systems don't have any OS at all. If 99% of embedded systems don't have OS, can we say that the biggest winners is nobody ?

Concerning developers count, a piece of consumer goods may sell many many times more than a PDA software. So even if the PDA market is smaller, the number of developers may be not. Just simple maths. A a game console model like Gameboy have been sold 100 million units but even a top selling 3D game like Inter Steller Flames has sold less than 0.01 million copies. Though only about 10 million units of PPC units (sum total of the nearly 100 models) were sold a year, there are thousands of developers on this platform.

It is not a fair world. The P800 and previously the 7650 and even earlier the 9210 sold millions of units. In PPC world, only maybe the 3650 can attain such popularity with 1 single model or the Palm V for that matter. But they are dwarfed by JAVA phones like T610 and I guess many other sexy JAVA phones also sell more than the above named PDA phones.