Symbian (company)

Symbian Ltd. - the company formed in 1998. According to Gartner, Symbian is a market leader of OS for smartphones: it possesses about 50%.

Shareholders

The share of Nokia in Symbian initially was more, than at other partners and made 56.3%. Panasonic (10.5%) and Samsung (4.5%) acted as other owners Ericsson (15.6%), Sony Ericsson (13.1%). Ten years later Nokia announced acquisition of all shares in the company which were not belonging to it before. The volume of the transaction was $410 million.

Management

Daniel Rubio is the main system architect.

History

July, 2009 Symbian Foundation released the first software package open source. Software packet for security (Security Package) which is released under EPL became available to users of Symbian. This first software for a system which is not under Symbian Foundation License (SFL)". Thanks to EPL software will be able to be exported out of borders of Great Britain whereas earlier it was impossible because of the existing rules. For the free software in rules there is an exception therefore transition from SFL to EPL began the most certain way to make available to all cryptographic functions of a system.

This step also shows all gravity of intentions of Symbian concerning the transition to open source announced earlier. According to the main system architect Daniel Rubio opening of the code of a core of a system, its key components and drivers will become further steps.

Along with transition to an open source code to Symbian also work on integration of some old components into a new system with the working name Symbian 2. New OS is based on the 9th version of a system, interfaces will be available to users S60, UIQ and MOAP user. Date of release defines the first half of 2010.

Competitors

• Apple iPhone
• Google Android
• Microsoft Windows Mobile

See Also

• Symbian OS
• Symbian Foundation