Symbian OS - Introduction

Background

"The Symbian Foundation (formerly Symbian Ltd.) hopes that its relationships with mobile device makers will be mutually beneficial. The organization develops and licenses the leading global operating system for so-called "smartphones" (mobile phones with advanced features such as email capability and Web browsing). Symbian's licensees include leading global mobile phone maker Nokia, as well as other top manufacturers including Sony Ericsson, Samsung Electronics, Fujitsu, LG Electronics, Mitsubishi Electric, and Sharp. The Symbian mobile operating system is developed and distributed as open source software and is available for use by any manufacturer on a royalty-free basis." Hoovers

"established on 24 June 1998 as a partnership between Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, and Psion to exploit the convergence between PDAs and mobile phones. Ten years to the day after it was established, on 24 June 2008, Nokia announced that they intended to acquire the shares that they did not already own, at a cost of €264 million. On the same day the Symbian Foundation was announced, with the aim to "provide royalty-free software and accelerate innovation", and the pledged contribution of the Symbian OS and user interfaces. The acquisition of Symbian Ltd. by Nokia was completed on 2 December 2008, at which point all Symbian employees became Nokia employees. Transference of relevant Symbian Software Ltd. leases, trademarks and domain names from Nokia to the Symbian Foundation was completed in April 2009..." Wikipedia

"In 2009, we established the Symbian Foundation to make the Symbian platform available open source and royalty-free. In November 2010 we announced that the foundation would ramp down its operational activities as a result of changes in global economic and market conditions.

We have now completed the transition from a non-profit organisation responsible for governing the open development and curation of the Symbian platform, to a licensing entity with no permanent staff. Moving forward, the foundation is responsible only for specific licensing and legal frameworks put in place during the open sourcing of the platform.

The Symbian platform will continue to evolve under Nokia, who have started to make the future development of the platform available via an alternative direct and open model..."Symbian

 

"Symbian Limited, a software licensing company, creates and licenses open operating system for mobile phones. It offers Symbian OS, a mobile operating system for smartphones; location based services; FreeWay, an IP networking architecture for downloads, audio/video streaming, and VoIP calls; and ScreenPlay, a graphics architecture product, which provides big screen effects to the users. The company also provides Symmetric multiprocessing for running applications, such as GPS and digital TV; and Demand Paging, which enables the usage of RAM by loading read-only code and data. It serves handset manufacturers, handset vendors, and network operators. The company was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom with additional offices in the United Kingdom, China, India, Japan, Korea, and the United States. BusinessWeek 2012

 

Products

Smartphones
Symbian Operationg System

Licensees of Symbian's operating system were:

Arima
BenQ
Fujitsu
Lenovo
Matsushita
Motorola
Nokia
Samsung
Sharp
Siemens
Sony Ericsson