[General] Fwd: Symbian Goes Open Source - Courtesy of Nokia

[Majed B.]

Honestly, I don't see this as a big threat. Symbian has been round for
a long time (10 years?) and it wasn't as good as it should have nor as
expected.

With Android, the framework is unified, so one program should work on
all devices, unless it uses hardware specific to a certain device
(e.g., accelerometer), which is not the case for Symbian, where
developers had to write the same program for multiple platforms (S60,
S80).

Symbian would have had a shot, maybe, if it was open-source 5 years
back. Enough time for the community to gather and fix this complicated
OS. I think Nokia did its stunt in an effort to stay on the top of the
mobile industry, since it's the main user of Symbian, as others are
shifting to Linux (e.g., Motorola).

Android seem to be having some delays over hardware issues from device
manufacturers, so enthusiasm is cooling down for now, but Symbian is
dying (in my opinion) much faster than Android's cool-down.

I'm guessing within 3 years, Symbian will be dead, and Nokia will have
some really tough time in sales, unless some miracle happens!
--
Majed B.