Nokia Taking Over Psion to Control Symbian? 144
securitas writes: "Reuters reports that Nokia is considering a takeover of Psion (mirror at Forbes), to gain control of the Symbian operating system. Psion is the second largest shareholder in Symbian with a 31.1 percent stake. Nokia holds 32.2 percent. The move is seen as a tactic to fight off Microsoft and dominate the lucrative and growing mobile phone software market. Symbian is currently owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Panasonic, Psion, Samsung Electronics, Siemens and Sony Ericsson. The report originates in the London newspaper, Business. What does this mean for the Symbian OS, which is currently an open OS?"
Oh, Symbian (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Oh, Symbian (Score:1)
Sy(m)bian jokes. (Score:4, Funny)
Please no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh well....
Re:Please no. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Please no. (Score:1)
Independence. (Score:3, Interesting)
This will be a good time to test that hypothesis out.
Re:Please no. (Score:3, Interesting)
A takeover of Symbian wouldn't really help Nokia in this regard. Since they know that, the only good reason would be to grab the shares from uninterested Psion, and then open it up for all to use.
The sooner the phone OS market goes to open source, the safer for the anti-M$ f
Wow what a subject!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow what a subject!! (Score:2)
Re:Wow what a subject!! (Score:1, Funny)
Execpt I read it as Nokia to take Psionic Control of Sybian. I was truley worried; this would sepll the end of maniknd as we know it--vibrating rinegrs and all. You know.
Re:Wow what a subject!! (Score:1)
Re:Wow what a subject!! (Score:1, Offtopic)
Gave a new meaning to Pound-me-in-the-ass-prison.
Nokia would not dare to hurt Symbian... (Score:3, Insightful)
In a long run all proprietory systems die out, open ones survive.
Certainly, IMHO
Re:Nokia would not dare to hurt Symbian... (Score:1)
After bunging SCO the $$$ millions that it needed to take on Big Blue, I wouldn't put it past Micro$oft to bung Nokia a few $$$ million to do the deal to achieve just that eventuality.
Isn't it in M$'s best interests to have every piece of OSS culled and the development trees stunted?
Is this a sign? (Score:4, Insightful)
"The move is seen as a tactic to fight off Microsoft and dominate the lucrative and growing mobile phone software market."
I see it as a parallel to the problems Palm was having [com.com] when they tried to get control of Symbian [archives.tcm.ie] in 2001. This could be a sign Nokia is in trouble [howardforums.com].
This is also good news for shareholders in Psion, as a similar event [archives.tcm.ie] caused a jump in share price back in 2001 when Palm tried to get control of Symbian.
Re:Is this a sign? (Score:5, Insightful)
anyways.. only thing surprising is that they(or the other companies in it) haven't bought psion out of symbian earlier. when you take a look on http://www.psion.com/ what's the phone you see? a nokia 7650. and quite frankly psion itself doesn't seem to have that much intrest in symbian(as something to be actively part of anymore), though i'm just a little out of loop what the f is psions product nowadays? poppers? one lousy email reader for symbian?
Re:Is this a sign? (Score:2)
Nokia in problems (Score:2)
A few years ago (holland and switzerland) almost everyone I know bought a nokia phone. They were the only sensible choice for critical and demanding consumers. Nowadays they have been completely replaced in this segment by Sony ericsson. Nokia has lost their technology and marketing advantage. SE has the lightest and smallest phones and/or with most features nowadays.
Re:Nokia in problems (Score:3, Informative)
the smaller/cheaper phones between nokia and se have pretty much the same featureset anyways, but se lacks totally what nokias series60 offers(their p800 is too expensive still, while superior to series60 phones technically).
phones are not about being smallest and light
Re:Nokia in problems (Score:1)
i guess.
Re:Is this a sign? (Score:2)
Is this some shit you made up yourselves, not to be outdone by the stellar predictions of Y2K and the Kohoutek Comet
Re:Is this a sign? (Score:2)
Open System? (Score:5, Informative)
Symbian is NOT an open system by most free/open source followers standards. It is an OS which can be licensed just like most others. Sure you get more access to the source code and internals but you cannot redistribute with no royalties and other advantages which traditional free/open software has.
That being said it is still a great OS for phones.
Re:Open System? (Score:2)
Re:Open System? (Score:5, Informative)
As a result, programs to convert data to and from Psion PDAs were difficult to write third-party stuff.
I liked the formfactor, I liked the idea of a real multitasking OS, but the fact is, Palm was a hell of a lot more open than Psion was, back in the day, and I don't think all that much has changed.
To add insult to injury, the only way to develop for Psion was to use Visual C++ with a special downloaded version of gcc, for which source was unavailable for a long time. I got this, to look at it, and it took me a year to get off their spam list.
Ugh.
Re:Open System? (Score:1, Informative)
On the other hand, most of symbian's applications do export stuff into standard formats (vcard, etc), or provide APIs to access PIM data, making it easier for 3rd parties to use.
Re:Open System? (Score:2)
At best, this comes out to the defense "but we designed it so badly that it's hard to document".
It's still a fatal flaw, and I believe it was a major component of what killed Psion.
Re:Open System? (Score:5, Informative)
The library you use to read/write the fileformats is called WINC, and is the same code that runs on Epoc but compiled for Windows. Excellent compatibility.
From what I can remember (I started programming Epoc on the summer of -98) the source to GCC was available the whole time - even externally.
Your mileage may vary.
Re:Open System? (Score:2)
The problem is that the WINC library is not remotely comparable to real documentation of the file format. "Compiles on windows" is not an open format. "Here is a definition of
Here, here! (Score:2, Insightful)
IMHO, the problem is that the mobile mar
Re:Open System? (Score:1)
Re:Open System? (Score:2)
Need to rush now, but can anyone look up the the Symbian License? Should be interesting to see if it really is Open (tm) or not.
Re:Open System? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd say Symbian is more "open" in some areas, while it is as open as MS in other areas.
On one hand everybody is allowed to look at the source of Eikon, the GUI layer of the operating system of Psion, without paying anything. Also you can see the entire sourcecode of their built-in word processor application. OK it's not opensource, but I appreciate their generous offer.
On the other hand, as far as any kernel-side things are concer
Re:Open System? (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't be fooled into thinking that Microsoft documents their *entire* API. There's a lot of stuff nobody really knows about. Some of it is in the "undocumented secrets" genre of books, and others have yet to be discovered (because we don't have the source code).
I wonder if Nokia will employ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have Nokia 5510. I can say the person who gave the ideas for the phone must have been very enthusiastic but quite clueless. Person who created the actual design and had clue about stuff definitely lacked that enthusiasm... and built a phone that mostly sucks.
1) Qwerty keyboard. Great for SMS, but there's no "notepad", phonebook entries are really short, in most cases the great keyboard is wasted.
2) Voice dialing, MP3 player, radio, analog audio input But no voice notes/recording. Was it so hard to hook up the microphone to the audio input?
3) Standard dialtones despite MP3 player. You can listen to MP3/radio only through earphones.
4) USB link to upload MP3. Works as "USB harddrive" and you can use it to transfer arbitrary data, but the phone can make use only of specially modified MP3s. To upload logos, ringtones, gfx SMS, "blankers" and all that stuff you need a special cable that goes into some strange slot under the battery. Same with using it as modem. USB for music only.
In short, this is a box with several devices that are simply not interconnected or very loosely connected. Things that would be trivial weren't done. (took me 5 mins to build a "powered microphone" to record voice over analog input) The idea was great, the final product sucks. Even greatest OS won't do any good if people won't use their imagination and do some obvious Good Things.
5510 is not Symbian (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:I wonder if Nokia will employ... (Score:2)
I've got a mate who works for Symbian, and after he first got the job back in 2000 he was always enthusing about how great they were. I clearly remember him telling me how most of the higher managers were from a technical/engineering background.
Re:I wonder if Nokia will employ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry to pick on you, but it is this sort of comment that pisses me off about techies trying to do design. There are basically two competing schools of design
KISS and WILI.
KISS is Keep it Simple Stupid and works well, this gets you elements that actually work and are clean to their purpose
WILI is Well I Like It and is typified by the "wouldn't it be great if" and "I'd like to see" arguments that come so often from the technical, and graphic design, communities.
Nok
Re:I wonder if Nokia will employ... (Score:2)
Yes. But they would make it helluva better.
When I bought it, I deeply believed I'll be able to do interesting stuff with it through USB, use it as a modem and such stuff. "That phone has USB" was one of catch phrases. The other was QWERTY keyboard. I like to write stuff and often find myself without any kind of writing tools when I have some cool idea. I hoped it would work as my personal notepad. - "If it has a keyb
Re:I wonder if Nokia will employ... (Score:1)
Article statement has no basis (Score:5, Insightful)
How exactly will this "...help it head off growing competition..."?
I dislike these articles that come to some sort of conclusion or make statements and provide no insight as to how they themselves came to that conclusion.
Am I missing something here?
Re:Article statement has no basis (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Article statement has no basis (Score:3, Interesting)
And in terms of "growing" competition, umm yes really big competition. About the most sold Microsoft OS phone was the SPV at 50,000 units. The SonyEricsson P800 (Symbian) sold over 1,000,000 and the companies in control of Symbian are ALL out to keep microsoft away from this market. So in many ways Nokia NOT having overall control will be better for Nokia as it will help keep everyone together.
Microsoft are currently as much of a threat to Nokia's phone market as Nokia are to Microsoft's PDA market....
Ownership breakdown (Score:5, Informative)
Hexadecimal please? (Score:1)
Decimal please! (Score:1)
By the way, which one did you escape from? Or do they let you on the internet where you are commited?
Re:Hexadecimal please? (Score:3, Funny)
calamari
Re:Hexadecimal please? (Score:1)
Re:Ownership breakdown (Score:3, Interesting)
In a follow-up story Nokia detailed that in case their Psion acquisition plans failed, they would try to acquire Ericsson next. This would give them a 49.7% share of Symbian, which would prompt them to take over either of: Sony, Siemens, or Samsung. Nokia representative concluded that they would do whatever it takes to acquire control of Symbian.
Seriously, I hope
Probably not a good idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Probably not a good idea... (Score:1)
"Give the devil your little finger and he tears your arm off.."
To have Symbian controlled by Nokia may be their only viable alternative to survive. It would give them the cute opportunity of pulling some "MS stunts" back at MS.. How about incompatability with MS phones... "Mmmmm.... incompatible.."
Re:Probably not a good idea... (Score:1)
Is the title from a SciFi novel? (Score:3, Funny)
I assume Nokia is the bad governement, Psion is a planet (or some such), and Symbian is some resource/person/super_robot?
Re: (Score:2)
In-Gauge (Score:3, Funny)
oops, forgot the sarcasm tags
Re:In-Gauge (Score:2)
Symbian OS (Score:5, Interesting)
Symbian was designed for devices with small memory. This, unfortunately, comes at a price - even doing simple string operations can be quite a chore. Memory is really cheap these days, so its advantage is diminishing
I do own a Psion Revo, and its doing its job excellently. It never required a reboot, unlike my Zaurus PDA which did (although the current ROMs are quite stable). But ...
With a linux programming background, developing for the Zaurus simply means that you have to get used to its resolution & a few other minor quirks (I never developed for WinCE, but I'm pretty sure a Windoze developer would say that it's pretty much the same thing). Developing for Symbian means learning a new philosophy. Learning a new programming philosophy is worth it when the number of devices sold for that OS is high (e.g. Palm). But Symbian devices never sold that well (at least in the US).
This is probably one of the reasons Psion uses WinCE for its newest Netbook.
WinCE (audio) sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
People always ask why their WinCE devices don't have decent audio integration with the phone. It's because WinCE audio drivers universally stink.
Symbian, on the other hand, lets you prove your audio channels correct and step through the whole stack with your favorite debugger. I would give up stoopid Wind32 HWND semantics for that ability any day of the week. It's not "learning a new philosophy," it's, "getting rid of Microsoft's x86-based Win32 encumbarances and closed source." I am sure others who speak from experience agree.
Re:WinCE (audio) sucks (Score:2)
To answer your question, no, the most recent WinCE audio drivers I've had trouble with, for the Toshiba e740, are not on the Microsoft web site. I wonder how many of those generic drivers are used in actual hardware w
Re:Symbian OS (Score:1)
Re:Symbian OS (Score:3, Interesting)
I've read this very statement before on
The string (or descriptor, as Symbian calls them) handling on Symbian C++ just rocks compared to char*, because it carries the length around. They are used instead of std::string because the C++ that Symbian was written
Psion (Score:4, Funny)
If so, then maybe Nokia is onto something for its builtin games. I think I have my original cassettes somewhere..
Re:Psion (Score:2)
It's just not ready (Score:2, Funny)
Re:It's just not ready (Score:1)
Symbian OS is just not ready for the desktop!
However, latest news, just in... Marketing says...
It IS!
No more Symbian/Palm/Linux/Windows, PLEASE! (Score:4, Interesting)
These cell phones can't keep a reception, drop calls like hot potatoes, and otherwise sound like shit. To add insult to injury they overheat, lock-up and need to be "rebooted", and damnit their batteries are more powerful and yet fail to last.
There's a few things I want my cell phone to do if I'm going to pay $300 for the device and $40+ a month for service:
1) Have a battery life comparable to a landline 900mhz wireless phone. That's hours upon hours of talk time or days upon weeks of standby.
2) Have audio quality and reliability equal to that of a land phone even when moving although in a reasonable location (not underground).
3) Be thinner, not smaller. I've got big hands so I can't be holding something 0.7" across. But that doesn't mean I need a phone that needs a man-bag, my pockets should suffice. Half an inch or less is something to shoot for on thickness. Height and width should be like a normal phone: It's got to reach from my ear to my mouth, right?
4) Not to heat up like a red-hot poker after 20 minutes of talking. Maybe that's a tactic in combination with the atrocious battery life to keep us from taking advantage of free nights and weekends.
As far as I'm concerned all that other internet, symphonic ring tone, downloadable wallpaper, customizable faceplate crap can be sacrificed until they get it right. I want a goddamn phone. Stop giving me overpriced toys for overgrown 12-year-olds.
Re:No more Symbian/Palm/Linux/Windows, PLEASE! (Score:1)
Re:No more Symbian/Palm/Linux/Windows, PLEASE! (Score:1, Funny)
Nice, so now we can look forward to a new series of spam pushing "cell phone enlargers."
Re:No more Symbian/Palm/Linux/Windows, PLEASE! (Score:5, Insightful)
To some poeple its not progress... (Score:2)
I want a phone that looks nice, is fairly small, has a vibrate function (so I can put it on silent but still know theres a call coming in, so don't e
Re:No more Symbian/Palm/Linux/Windows, PLEASE! (Score:5, Informative)
More importantly, if you buy one of these cheaper phones (like an unlocked/sim-free R520 or 3390) the carrier has no justification for locking you into a contract (since they aren't subsidizing your phone), so if you get poor service, you can simply put a new sim in your old phone that has your old contacts already in it.
Re:No more Symbian/Palm/Linux/Windows, PLEASE! (Score:2)
I have an R520m; it's a reasonable size but only ~10mm thin (I have friends who claim it's a "thin brick"). Fully charged, mine claims over 2 1/2 hours of talk time, 160hrs standby (and that's pessimistic estimate when I pull it out of the charger). It has bluetooth, IrDA and GPRS packet data, if you feel like using them, excellent sound quality and amazingly good reception. Oh, and it's tri-band, and I picked mine up online for NZ$250 (~US$120?) a year ago.
Pussy boy (Score:2, Funny)
Dude,
guys don't talk on the phone that long.
That's a girl thing. Here's a guy's conversation.
First: Man to Man:
Man 1: Hey what's up
Man 2: Let go to a strip club
Man 1: Fuckin' a. I'll be over in 1/2 an hour.
BOOM. Phone hangs up. Conversation is less than a minute.
Second: Man to Woman
This doesn't happen
Third: Woman to Man
Woman: Hey, what's up
Man: I'm kinda busy right now.
Woman: Can you come over? I'll make you dinner, you
Re:No more Symbian/Palm/Linux/Windows, PLEASE! (Score:1)
Phone Size (Score:1)
Was Nokia that lonely? (Score:5, Funny)
I have to admit, I never really pictured Nokia to be the lonely, under-stimulated type. So far as controlling Sybian, I've never seen one personally, but from what I've read Sybians have fairly simple, yet robust controls, I don't really think it would be neccessary to purchase Psion to get the desired results.
Oh, and so far as 'remaining open', I think it would go completely against the design of Sybian to go closed. I mean you would lose most available functionality by closing up all of a sudden.
</deadpan<
Somebody mod this up (Funny!) (Score:2)
This would be great for their stock... (Score:1, Interesting)
This is an exciting development to keep an eye on...
What it means is (Score:2, Insightful)
They better act fast (Score:4, Informative)
Samsung are about to announce their first Mobile Windows device. [infosyncworld.com]
A week ago, InfoSync ran a piece on the upcoming Microsofts Mobile Windows features.
Interesting [infosyncworld.com] reading.
Re:They better act fast (Score:2)
Samsung was always grazing at both sides of the fense. I don't think they are about to dump Symbian.
Motorolla otoh never really warmed up to Symbian though.
Re:They better act fast (Score:2)
symbian on p900 is nearly perfect (Score:5, Interesting)
If Nokia can make all their medium and high end phones Series 60 (symbian based), that'll be good. Series 40 is nice but way too slow (comparable to T68i speed...imagine...) And I think Samsung
Sounds good to me. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sounds good to me. (Score:2)
Which would mean no more smartphones from Sony Ericsson for a long time.
Why?
Because Symbian is there, it works as a phone OS and has done so for a couple of years. Linux/Qt is not there as a phone OS. It needs a lot of work to become as functional and polished as Symbian is now.
But Nokia would of course love such a decision. Having their main competitor leave the market for a year or so would be absoulute wonderful f
Re:Sounds good to me. (Score:1)
Qtopia Phone Edition [trolltech.com] is likely to appear on a phone soon.
The Motorola A760 is using Linux/Qt [trolltech.com], not Qtopia Phone Edition, but it's basically the same thing.
You say Linux/Qt needs a lot of work to become as functional and polished as Symbian, so I'm assuming you have used one of these phones as it's the only one around that uses Linux and Qt so far. What's it like? I haven't found any reviews yet.
Rik
Gartner: "Symbian will lose smartphone battle" (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:Gartner: "Symbian will lose smartphone battle" (Score:1)
Gartner isn't exactly unbiased when it comes to Microsoft. Their opinions are less and less interesting.
I can't get past... (Score:2, Funny)
J2ME... (Score:1)
Re:J2ME... (Score:1)
Infact, atleast 7700 will have the J2ME engine integrated. Dunno about others.
(Java should die anyway. Fucked up technology.)
Re:J2ME... (Score:2)
>technologies, you would know that J2ME is just a
>middlet engine sitting on top of a real
>operating system.
You're not me, and I believe I have more clue than you do - if you had half-a-clue about any technologies in the 90's at all, or at least some reading skills, you could have told the difference between a "platform" and an "operating system".
J2ME is a "real" platform - as "real" as your definition of a "real" operating system - that ideally runs on a
...but quickly loses control (Score:1)
what is "open"? (Score:2)
In what sense is Symbian OS "open"? It looks to me like it's a proprietary set of APIs and a proprietary product that is controlled by a single company that just happens to have a lot of investors. That's better than Windows CE, but still not "open".
I think the best thing for the phone market would be if it switched aggressively to truly open systems. That means systems with open APIs (POSIX, X11, Gtk+) and preferably open source i
Symbian independent? Oh puh-lease.... (Score:1)
This would more be a move by Nokia to make sure that Psion (who's EPOCH OS was the basis for Symbian) doesn't jump ship. They've lost Motorola and others.
To be honest, Symiban would only benefit - the consortium has not been as effective as it could have been - it's only been Nokia's intervention that's helped them make any progres
Symbian (Score:2, Informative)
terrible development environment. Think C++
with lots of overloaded operators and wall-to-wall
typedefs and coding infrastructure rules.
Understanding one line of code can take hours.
The books are all written by Symbian apologists
and are very annoying to read. For example, at
one point one of the books presents as a virtue
the fact that Symbian makes 27 memory allocations
for each keyclick, saying in effect that "the system is doing a lot for the user".
Regular makefile
Re:MODERATION ABUSE (Score:2)
Re:MODERATION ABUSE (Score:2)