Symbian completes move to Open Source platform

Unless you're a cellphone fanatic, it might not have occurred to you that the OS with the most installed number of users is Symbian. Used mostly by Nokia handsets, over 330 million phones are powered by Symbian. But Nokia liked the software so much, it bought the company and decided to change it to an open source OS like Android. This became the largest transition in history from a closed to an open platform. The Symbian Foundation was created to be the "keeper of the code". And for those who think this is all in response to the momentum garnered by Android, Nokia claims that these plans were made before Android and even before the iPhone came into existance. And whereas only a third of Android is truly open source according to Symbian, a higher percentage of Symbian is open source says the Foundation. the latter also notes that Google still has wide latitude in deciding what goes in the code, the Symbian Foundation wants a larger base of contributors to the software. So what is the future for Symbian? No matter how open an OS is, without a decent number of apps and connections to the social network sites, people will turn away. This needs to be addressed. One positive might be the growing sense that Google is becoming too powerful. If this happens, users might look toward another open source system and right now, Symbian is ready, willing, able AND open.

source: Wired

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