Nokia's Symbian Foundation out to kick Google's Android's Ass ?? Apple's Ass is on The Line Too!!

A few days after i posted about my take on Google's Android on my previous post , I read about the recent Nokia's USD 410 Million purchase of the remaining 48% of Symbian's share that's not Nokia's...

Nokia pledges to offer free open source applications in the future... Android is doing the same but up till now , the whole project is still being postponed... Apple is currently finishing up on the opening of their App Store... sadly Apple will be selling some of those applications.. which means once Symbian Foundation and Android starts producing something for the mass market , Apple will be forced to offer free applications eventually .. and that is very very good..

All these open source stuff is really interesting.. it's like a huge canvas for developers to create applications for the end users to benefit from...i'm pretty sure that the future phone softwares won't be as boring as what it is now (iPhone's apps are of a different league for now..)

and the idea of these open source materials being so easily available on mobile phones in the future really will change how people use their mobile devices..With Nokia's Symbian Foundation urge to smack everyone from Google's Android to Apple's App Store to Research in Motion's Blackberry to LiMo... it's gonna be a very very interesting industry in the coming years..

Here's a preview of Android



And here's what Apple has done on their app...

Android - The Next Generation Phone Platform

I think it's a great great idea that the idea of Android is soon to be available for the mass market. What's great about it is that , mobile phones won't need to be in a 'locked' platform with only limited applications to play around with.

I'm still not entirely sure about what's going on with Android. But from what i know so far , it's definitely an open source project..

"Android was built from the ground-up to enable developers to create compelling mobile applications that take full advantage of all a handset has to offer. It is built to be truly open. For example, an application could call upon any of the phone's core functionality such as making calls, sending text messages, or using the camera, allowing developers to create richer and more cohesive experiences for users. Android is built on the open Linux Kernel. Furthermore, it utilizes a custom virtual machine that has been designed to optimize memory and hardware resources in a mobile environment. Android will be open source; it can be liberally extended to incorporate new cutting edge technologies as they emerge. The platform will continue to evolve as the developer community works together to build innovative mobile applications."

This whole project involves about 300 companies.. namely , Google , Nuance (speech recognition software) , Motorola , HTC , SONiVox , Samsung , just to name a few.. the list is available here..



I think this project will definitely rock. It's like how iPhone came out with their 2.0 SDK , it provides programmers a platform to express their creativity ..it's really a case of technology expression + usability + the uber cool factor ...

I'm not sure if there's other open source platform out there or not.. but this Google's Alliance is definitely taking Apple's iPhone's platform head on... it'll be interesting in the next few months...I'll look around for samples of what it'll look like and post it up later...