Symbian OS in Open Source

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In a jaw dropping revelation world’s most popular smartphone OS, Symbian went open source. Symbian OS had been in a cold war with Google’s open source Android OS, which seems to influence the former’s decision to enter the public domain. A leading mobile OS world wide, Symbian is still a minority in US.  Nokia E71x is the only Symbian phone with AT&T carrier, while there are no Symbain phones with Sprint or Verizon support. The new move is set a change Symbian’s fate in U.S. According to Larry Berkin, Symbian’s head of global alliances, we could hope to see Symbian-based devices from U.S.-based carriers coming in 2010,

Currently, there are 330 million Symbian devices in the world. The major companies making Symbian phones include  Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Fujitsu and Sharp. With Symbian OS in Open Source, the foundation released a statement that any individual or organization will be able to use and modify the code for any purpose, whether that be for a mobile device or for something else entirely.

Symbian is run by a non-profit foundation that wants to see the OS spread worldwide. To get into details you might check out their platform roadmap .

Symbian would be eying on vendors who have given to Google Android’s Openness. They have been repelled by Google’s stance on Nexus One that is promoted as a better device than other Android phones.

Symbian in its press release has stated that not just the consumer market, Symbian OS in Open Source has been widely appreciated by the advocates of free software.

Developers everywhere will want to study Symbian, to hack on it, and to write applications for it. The day of truly free telephony is about to dawn,

Praising the move, Eben Moglen, founding director of the Software Freedom Law Center, said

Symbian’s roadmap is still to be realized, for now we could rely on Berkin’s words,

You should see a lot of activity there certainly this year, but the bulk of it is going to happen over the next 12, 24, 36 months