The UK Mobile Phone Blog

Symbian OS goes Open Source

Symbian is currently the Operating System boasting the highest number of installed users with an incredible 330+ Million phones being powered by the Symbian software. With this is mind, it’s surprising to hear Symbian is also one of the last OS’s to offer a major update, even though it is starting to look very tired and out dated in comparison with the recent iPhone OS and Android OS offerings.

The biggest user of Symbian software is Finnish manufacturer Nokia who liked the software that much that it has bought the company and has announced it’s intentions to make Symbian OS Open Sourced. But what exactly does this mean? Well, without going into too many boring details, open sourcing the software opens up the availability of the Source Code to programmers, who can then develop, modify and distribute as they see fit meaning a richer and hopefully what becomes a considerably improved OS very quickly thanks to developer input. This also promises a multitude of new functionality and applications.

Whilst it seems that this move is a direct result of the ever growing threat from Android OS and the continuing popularity of the iPhone, Nokia have gone on record stating that plans were made to open source the software long before Android and even the mighty iPhone came in to existence. Either way, we don’t really care, what we do care about, is whether or not this means that the next incarnation of Symbian will become a worthy contender in what is heating up to be an almighty battle between the different Operating Systems.