Nokia and Google are trying to turn the smartphone world
on its head by pushing open source software.

If there is one word grabbing the wireless telecom industry’s attention at this time in its history, it is the word “open.” The term has been applied to an opening of networks to more kinds of devices and applications, but also to the software that runs on wireless handsets.

The push toward open networks and open software platforms is being driven, at least in part, by the convergence of the wired and wireless networks. Wireless broadband and more powerful handsets are making that possible.

The handsets themselves and their manufacturers have set the stage for what could be a dramatic shift, especially for the software that runs on so-called smartphones. Historically, the smartphone operating systems (OS) have been proprietary in nature and open to outside developers in differing ways dependent on the OS owner.

Two heavyweights in their industries – Nokia and Google – plan on changing that paradigm. Both see open source handset OSs as the wave of the future, but not necessarily in the same way. Some might see their efforts as idealistic moves to democratize phone software, although both have business motives.

Smartphones make up a relatively small number of all mobile phones sold annually, but their numbers have been increasing. ABI Research has estimated 14% of the 1.2 billion handsets sold this year are in the smartphone category, while the NPD Group said smartphones comprise 19% of U.S. sales. NPD said smartphone sales in the United States have increased 84% in the last year, headed by two proprietary systems, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry and Apple’s iPhone.

Google may have provoked the rising interest in an open mobile OS when it announced in late 2007 the creation of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) and the Android operating system. The first Android phone, the HTC G1, came out this fall through T-Mobile USA. Google and the OHA also this fall created the Android Open Source Project, ostensibly to allow anyone to use the OS to build applications on Android phones.

SYMBIAN OS
That’s essentially what Nokia had in mind last June when it announced plans to acquire all of the assets of Symbian Ltd., the company responsible for the Symbian OS, and then donate those assets and its own S60 user interface software to a new Symbian Foundation. The foundation, which has 52 members, plans to offer the OS for free to any foundation member as early as the first quarter of 2009.

Williams: Serves on the board of the Symbian Foundation.

The foundation will be run by a 10-member board, which includes Nokia as well as AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics/NXP, Texas Instruments and Vodafone. Lee Williams, currently on the board of Symbian Ltd. and head of Nokia’s S60 unit, has been named executive director.

Sony Ericsson and Motorola, which jointly own the UIQ phone software, have said they will contribute that user interface code to the foundation. DoCoMo said it will contribute its MOAP interface. Parts of those UIs may be used in the next Symbian code, although S60 is expected to be the main focus.

Both Google and Nokia have said open-source software will make it faster, cheaper and easier for handset manufacturers, carriers and developers to take their products and services to market.

While Android started from zero handset sales until the launch of the G1 this fall, the Symbian OS is 10 years old and in use on 225 million handsets. So, even though completely open-source Symbian code likely won’t be available until 2010, the foundation believes it has a headstart because of its widespread adoption, according to John Forsyth, Symbian’s strategy vice president.

The foundation also plans to make Symbian software available free to anyone through the Eclipse open source license platform in 2010.

Nokia strongly believes in open-source software, according to David Rivas, Nokia vice president for the S60 product, but he said the decision to turn Symbian into an open-source model was a business decision. He said open source will give Symbian even wider distribution and use.

“No one has taken a software asset the size of Symbian and run it as open source,” he said. “We will make all the code available for free on Day 1 (when the foundation is formally created).”

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor

FORUM NOKIA
Tom Libretto, vice president of Forum Nokia, said the forum’s developer membership has skyrocketed since the Symbian deal was announced. The forum helps developers writing applications for Nokia’s S60 phones. He said the forum has added 323,000 members in the last six months and now totals 3.7 million.

Most of the forum’s members are in the Europe/Middle East/Africa region, with the second largest group in the Americas, but it has seen dramatic growth from developers in India and China, Libretto said.

Libretto said despite some comments in the media that Nokia was losing developer mindshare to the likes of Apple’s iPhone, Android and Microsoft, a study by Evans Data showed the opposite. He said nearly 21% of mobile phone developers preferred writing applications for Nokia handsets, followed by Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Apple iPhone and Samsung.

Benoit Schillings, chief technologist for Nokia’s Qt Software unit (formerly Trolltech), said that Qt was now being ported to the S60 system. Qt is an open source development platform based on C++ code that makes it possible to create an application and deploy it on Windows, Mac, Linux, Windows CE, Windows Mobile and embedded Linux platforms. The Qt for S60 is available to developers in a technical preview version and a production release is expected by the middle of 2009.

Syed: Anyone can add an app on top of an open OS.

Faraz Syed, CEO and co-founder of the developer-focused DeviceAnywhere company, said the advantage an open OS has is that anyone can add their application on top of it. That doesn’t mean the application will run on all handsets unless it is certified, he said, which is a step the Symbian Foundation intends to take. Syed said what is more important to developers with regard to the open software is whether it also has an open business model which helps developers find a direct path to market.

Another benefit of open source, Syed said, is that it usually means there are more ways for a developer to get help on working with the code. That in turn makes working with open source software less complex.

Syed said Symbian is the most mature smartphone OS in existence, with a widespread developer community and “really good applications,” but he said Symbian may have been forced to go the open source route because of the threat of Google’s Android.

“They are responding to competitive pressures from Google, and at the same time to the growing noise level in the market about openness,” he said. “They did well to react to that push.”

THE SMARTPHONE EFFECT
Developers at the recent Symbian Smartphone Show in London mostly agreed that there has been a proliferation of smartphone operating systems and there may even be more on the way with different flavors of mobile Linux. Symbian’s Forsyth agreed with that assessment but said he’s convinced there will be a consolidation in the years ahead.

There likely will be only two or three mobile operating systems in the future, he said, although the iPhone and BlackBerry systems could continue to occupy niches.

“The single most expensive part of the phone today is hardware adaptation,” Forsyth said, referring to adapting the software to run on particular handsets. He said the number of operating systems will shrink because the handset OEMs cannot justify working with more than a few.

“We think we have a credible shot at being one” of the operating systems left standing, he said.