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Non-profit model gets thumbs up from world’s press

By James on 26 June 2008

GLOBAL – News of the Symbian Foundation formation has grabbed the attention of
the world’s press, with a lot of the broadsheet website’s inevitably
leading with ‘rival to the Google Android OS’.

However, the majority of
media analysts were on hand to lend their views to yesterday’s
announcement and the consensus of opinion was the new open source
royalty-free Symbian OS is definitely a positive development for the mobile industry.

Speaking to the Guardian, Global Insight analyst Emeka Obiodu, Global Insight, couldn’t help but see the Foundation’s arrival affecting Google’s Android vision, saying

“Google’s plans had been “fatally derailed” by Nokia’s move. Nokia is taking the fight to Google on its own terms,” he said. “Google prides itself on open-source credentials and is eager to build up a coalition of industry players to push through with its agenda (which is to cultivate a viable platform for mobile advertising). However, Nokia has nipped that in the bud.”

But a lot of analyst highlighted the Symbian Foundation’s non-profit, royalty free business model meant the cost of Nokia’s mobile will fall and only benefit the consumer. Talking to the Financial Times, Ben Wood, analyst at CCS Insight says

“It gives Nokia the opportunity to shave valuable dollars off the cost of the handset using Symbian. Nokia can push Symbian deeper into mid priced phones and therefore drive more volume.”

Analyst Carolina Milanesi from Gartner echoed this sentiment when she chatted to the Telegraph,

“Lower price points are what operators and the market need to push smartphone adoption and dropping royalty is going to help that. For operators this offers a good alternative to Android.”

USA Today’s website sees the joining together of rival companies as way of easing some anxiety about control within the mobile industry, reporting,

“The foundation model addresses another concern from carriers and handset manufacturers, which don’t want a single company to control the software like Microsoft does on desktops.”

We’ll have more reaction from the tech press later, meanwhile, what do you think? We’ll be doing a round up of the best comments before the week is out, so let us know below.

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