Consortium to unify Symbian platform as iPhone and Android threats loom

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 24 June 2008 13:15

Your IT - Mobility

The Symbian and Android (Open Handset Alliance) camps have limited overlap, with the latter having a more extensive list of founding members.

For example, Symbian's STMicroelectronics and TI are balanced by Broadcom and Marvell. AT&T and Vodafone line up against Sprint Nextel, Telecom Italia, Telefonica and T-Mobile.

LG, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo and Samsung have a toe in each pond.

Things could pan out well for ordinary users. Two widely supported platforms (especially where low to midrange phones are concerned) would maintain competitive tension without requiring third party developers to spread their resources too thinly. They would also benefit from the opportunity to see a familiar face when the time comes to upgrade their handsets, whether they choose a model from the same or a different manufacturer.

More than 100,000 developers have downloaded Apple's iPhone SDK, and Google's Android Developer Challenge has already made $US25,000 awards to 50 development teams working on software for the new platform. Those 50 are still in the running for a further $US3.75 million in prizes, and another $US5 million will be up for grabs after the first Android phones ship.