Analysis: Where is Symbian headed?

The keynote address by Nigel Clifford, CEO, Symbian, was the first session in the morning of the first day at the Symbian Smartphones Show 2008. One would expect to be fed information on what the future holds for mobile phones in general, Symbian, and especially the Symbian Foundation. We listened to the exact opposite of that.

The Show marked the 10 years of Symbian's existence in the market, by being the largest one to date, but also for focusing on mobile strategy.

A strong reference was made to the developers, comparing them to both the record-breaking Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, as well as to Formula 1. Encouragement is need as Clifford revealed that the code up to today took “1000 man years of engineering effort.”

Making Symbian free will mean that there will be no income whatsoever for the department. This way, the platform will be available for accelerated development, which will attract the developer.

Clifford told the media and developers present that the company wishes to deliver in the most multimedia and enterprise cases. A proof of that is the Nokia NSeries and ESeries range.

Ironically, quality is the most important target for Symbian, I say ironic because most flagship devices from Nokia come with serious problems, although this came be blamed to both S60 and Symbian.

There will be little dependence on Symbian itself, as companies will need their own teams to customize the operating system to suit their needs. Nokia reduces losses this way by eliminating the need of support teams who would cater each and every client.

Compatibility is incredibly important today, with other software platforms, not only mobile, but also in computer systems, and Symbian is going to stress on that issue.

The CEO reminded us of the achievements by Symbian, such as the “joint venture of fierce competitors that target a market that doesn't even exist yet”, and that the rules of game are going to change, because code decays. This was pretty much directed to developers, who need to be drawn to the upcoming open-source platform.

The question at the moment is: "Is Symbian going in the right direction?" By looking at the way the industry is behaving, there is a clear sign of importance over software, which companies need to make available to developers in its full power so that more interactive applications can be created, that attract the consumer. The problem is that software companies cannot afford to make code open-source simply due to the possible lack of ROI. Symbian on the other hand, is owned by Nokia, which gathers its ROI from hardware mostly, and won't necessarily lose by making its code available to everyone.

Both Google Android and the Symbian Foundation should provide some kind of support to manufacturers to optimize and customize code, which will bring in additional royalties.

Thibault Rouffineau, Director of Development, Symbian, revealed further facts in an interview with PhoneReport, which is to be published at a later stage.