11.18.09
The Future of Phones Likely Belongs to Linux
Summary: Mobile king Symbian put to rest, giving another huge endorsement to Linux which will replace it
It’s not just supercomputers where GNU/Linux is a winner; in mobile phones too, based on several independent predictions from industry analysts, Linux is expected to become dominant. Smartphones are a growth market, despite the deprived economy.
The latest news is that Nokia will be replacing Symbian with Linux. This news is dynamite because Symbian is the dominant mobile platform at the moment and it is owned only by Nokia.
Nokia says it will replace Symbian with its Maemo Linux by 2012.
It is already happening.
“NSeries Nokias Say Goodbye to Symbian, Hello to Maemo
[...]
Here’s a bold statement: Symbian S60 is simply not good enough. I’m sure that many Nokia owners and analysts who know that Symbian currently holds around 50% of the smartphone OS market would disagree. But I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the new generation of smartphones – primarily Androids, the iPhone, and webOS based devices – are simply better than Symbian S60 and Windows Mobile (up to) 6.5 when it comes to doing what the users today want from a smartphone: browsing the web, using Facebook and Twitter, gaming, and finding simple apps that will satisfy their specific needs.
Nokia’s migration to Linux is fantastic news, but ‘Microsoft Enderle’ is already attacking Nokia using revisionism — a subject that we wrote about just days ago when another Microsoft partner did its own share of revisionism.
In his typical way, Microsoft’s close ally Rob Enderle [1, 2] rewrites the history of Novell along the lines of “it was all Novell’s fault”. He also keeps warping the history of Netscape in this way and if Microsoft is allowed to get away with it (via partners and people whom it hires), then it’s truly sinful to future generations. These Microsoft boosters are putting out there newer articles that modify the past and (over)write it differently; this tends to get precedence in search results because of age (more recent items prioritised). Other examples of revisionism are listed below. █
Related posts:
- IDG/IDC Does Microsoft’s Revisionism to Deny Crimes
- More Microsoft Jack Revisionism
- How History Gets Warped — Not Forgotten — to Conceal Microsoft Violations
- The New York Times, Hosted by Microsoft Revisionists
NotZed said,
November 19, 2009 at 8:13 am
But I imagine the ‘Linux’ on these systems isn’t really free software for the customer in any practical sense. Just for the vendor?
Will it make any practical difference to customers, apart from the potential passed on savings of reduced licensing fees, and perhaps a more modern system which can keep pace with technology better?
Big bloody whoop.
williami said,
November 19, 2009 at 8:33 am
As a side note, I’m EXTREMELY annoyed that AT&T doesn’t have any Linux/Android based smartphones, only a Symbian based one.
In the future, if AT&T doesn’t have any Linux smartphones, I’m switching to Verizon (in which they have a Droid smartphone, which is based on Android), Sprint (home of the Palm Pre), or some other carrier that offers Linux/Android and has great service.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
November 19th, 2009 at 9:14 am
AT&T is a terrible company for many other reasons.
Mikko said,
November 19, 2009 at 9:37 am
Nokia isn’t dumping Symbian they will use it for future smart phones
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
November 19th, 2009 at 9:46 am
The writings seem to be on the wall. They’ll probably mix the best of Symbian and Linux to make their better breed of Maemo, whose kernel is Linux.
Mikko Reply:
November 19th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
It could be that they are going with Maemo on all the N series and Symbian on the other ones
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
November 19th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
I’m not sure it makes business sense for them to maintain two overlapping platforms. What does the EPL allow them to do which GPLv2 forbids?