If you had asked me where the mobile phone operating system was heading last week. I would have said something like: “Symbian will continue its gradual decline, Apple’s iPhone special mix will continue to grab the headlines, and Linux-LiMo, Google Android, etc.–would continue its slow, but unstoppable, march to victory.That was last week.
This week, Nokia announced that it was buying Symbian. That wouldn’t have changed what I saw in my crystal ball. Then, Nokia announced they were going to open-source Symbian OS and its development tools and its GUI (graphical user interface) and, OK, Nokia and its partners were going to open-source the whole Symbian ball of wax.
Ka-Boom! Sorry, that was the sound my crystal ball made made as it fell off its stand and smashed into a million pieces.
As netbooks and phones continue their convergence, Linux offers quite a bit to developers who are interested in open platforms.
Apple’s decided on a single OS for their devices – OSX runs on everything from iPhones to servers. Linux offers similar scaling advantages which Symbian doesn’t.