Technology news and Jobs arrow Telecommunications arrow Symbian Foundation attracts new members
Symbian Foundation attracts new members E-mail
by Stuart Corner   
Friday, 11 July 2008
The Symbian Foundation, the new body set up to promote and develop the Symbian handset operating system, has added 11 members, including global mobile operator 3.

The new members are mobile operators 3, América Móvil and TIM, semiconductor manufacturer Marvell plus services and software providers Aplix, EB, EMCC Software, Sasken and TietoEnator. The Symbian Foundation claims that since plans for its formation were announced, more than 150 organisations have registered their interest in joining via the website at www.symbianfoundation.org .

Plans for the Symbian Foundation were announced on June 24 by the initial board members; AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Samsung Electronics, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone, together with Symbian Limited. A key to the foundation is the decision of Nokia to acquire all shares in Symbian Ltd and donate the intellectual property in Symbian to the foundation.

The acquisition of Symbian Limited by Nokia is expected to close in Q4, 2008. After that assets to the foundation will include the Symbian OS and the S60 Symbian based software from Nokia, UIQ technology by Motorola and Sony Ericsson and MOAP(S) by NTT DoCoMo and Fujitsu. This contributed software will be available under a royalty-free license to foundation members from the first day of Symbian Foundation operations, expected 1H 2009.

The Foundation says it will work to unify the platform, with the first unified foundation release expected in 2009 and will make the platform available in open source by June 2010 (two years from the Symbian Foundation announcement).

"We were delighted with the broad support for plans for the Symbian Foundation", said Kai Öistämö, executive vice president, devices at Nokia, on behalf of the initial board members. "We believe that this is a significant move for our industry and are pleased that these additional market leaders agree and are giving their support to the initiative."

"3 is pleased to support the Symbian Foundation and believe this is a significant development in open mobile software platforms", said Fergal Walker, director of products at 3 UK. "We believe that this initiative will provide an excellent opportunity to expand the range and quality of services for our customers."

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