A great fear has struck Nokia, as other players joined the operating system field. The operating systems which will be installed in cellular phones will directly impact the sales of the devices, the company's home field. Is it possible that as soon as new devices based on operating systems such as Google's Android, Apple's iPhone or Microsoft's Windows Mobile in its seventh version, are launched – Nokia's near monopoly in the market will be broken?
A Crossroads
So why does a company such as Nokia need a project joint with a few companies for itself alone?
The Symbian platform is at a fatal crossroads right now. The project founded about ten years ago has aimed to produce an open and unified platform for cellular phones. Since this statement the Symbian was divided into three separate divisions due to power struggles in the project: Nokia's S60 division, Sony Ericsson's and Motorola's UIQ division and NTT DoCoMo's MOAP.
Following Symbian's split, the divisions failed to work together, which led to three different operating systems which don't support each other. Over the past few years, it soon became clear that Symbia is Nokia and Nokia is Symbian. The company has increased its holdings in the company and even bothered to launch the largest variety of devices based the operating system, while other big producers looked to other directions (Sony Ericsson towards the WM and Motorola towards Linux).
It's still too soon to try to imagine how the new interface will look after Nokia's big purchase, but there has been some innuendo which arrived from the company that suggests that significant components from UIQ and MOAP will be integrated in Nokia's popular S60.
The Battle of the Giants: Symbian vs Android
The cellular market took a serious jolt when Nokia's planned takeover of Symbian took place turned it into a private organization without profit. The move's goal was to distribute Nokia's operating system to as much cellular devices as possible, a step that will be done by canceling the royalty payments for the use of the operating system which was conventional up until this point (about 4 dollars per device). Although in the world of operating systems for cellular devices there are other competitors, like Microsoft and Apple (although the latter produces a system for a single device), a war is predicted to take place in 2009 between the giants Nokia and Google. Last November, when Google revealed its intentions of entering the cellular devices and open operating systems market, agreements were immediately signed with LG, HTC, Motorola and Samsung manufacturers which announced that they will release the first device supported by Android by the end of 2008.
When Nokia noticed the apparent move and after the heads of the company understood that it's better to act before new conditions will be created in the cellular market, they decided upon the purchase.
Too Little and Too Late?
Isn't this step a little too late? Nokia has announced that the devices which operate the next version of Symbian are supposed to reach the market in 2010. Another interesting question is how much of a difference will there be between the new operating system and the Symbian we know today? Microsoft, Apple and Google's operating systems look simple and most of them are operated by an intuitive method, a touch screen – unlike Symbian, which has been called a slow and clumsy system.
Looking at the long run, it seems that the manufacturers who'll put their money on all the horses (operating systems) are those who'll get all the glory. If one operating system fails, they'll always have a richer and more complex catalogue than other operating systems.
LG, Motorola and Samsung have offered support for the three big operating systems: Symbian, Android and Windows Mobile. On the surface it looks like it's a smart move to spend the investment on a few horizons without taking a too big a risk. Whereas Nokia has strategically decided to go only for the S60 (although there have been talks about other directions), an interesting and decisive move which may help the company continue to be the big leader of the cellular market, but maybe also turn the market's powers and make it in fact a loser.
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