What started off as a simple exercise in open platforms and wooing software developers can lead to Linux being picked up by a major cell phone manufacturer. Mike Cane wrote in another day with a link to a report by ARCchart, which looks at the current events in Symbian world (where Nokia has 47.9% share) and internal conflicts, where Nokia was a frequent target:
Symbian has strived to assert its independence and to portray itself and being vendor agnostic, and this brought about frequent clashes with Nokia. Nowhere was this conflict felt more than when it came to Symbian’s desire to IPO – a move which would have ended Nokia’s virtual control of the OS.
Linux Pipeline asks whether Nokia will switch to Linux, and says it’s entirely possible, since Nokia will be able to offset the royalty payments.
Such a switch by Symbian would make Linux, in one fell swoop, the leading mobile device platform. It already is riding a wave with PalmSource’s decision to port the Palm OS to Linux and a defection by Nokia would seal the deal.
EnGadget has its share of opinions:
If they do make the switchover there’d be some potentially huge compatibility headaches, but nothing they couldn’t get over, especially since a lot of Series 60 apps are written in Java.
[…] at Mobile Pipeline that supports the notion of Nokia using Linux on its phones. Link from nokia770.com.] — This piece first appeared at Teleread on July 27, 2005 rogers at 12:11 pm No Comments […]
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