The news coming out of the Symbian Smartphone Show in London, an industry trade gathering for developers, manufacturers, and software companies, wasn’t just about the launch of the latest models this year. The choice of Nokia executive Lee Williams as the new chairman of the Symbian Foundation is raising questions about the consortium’s independence from Nokia—just at a time when analysts are projecting a slowdown in sales of high-end phones.
Williams is currently in charge of a division within Nokia that oversees S60, the dominant user interface used by the Symbian operating system. The announcement of his new appointment was made on Oct. 23 at the conference, which this year served as a kind of coming out party for the foundation.
London-based Symbian, the leading maker of operating system software for advanced mobile phones, was set up a decade ago to develop an independent software platform for smartphones. Its software is now used in more than half of all such devices, relegating rivals such as Microsoft’s Windows Mobile to a small slice of the market. But handset maker Nokia is its biggest customer, leading to questions about its independence.
Nokia announced a plan on June 24 to buy the 52.1% of shares it doesn't already own in Symbian and set up an open-source foundation, which aims to give away resulting software for free to other handset makers. The move was in reaction to shifts in the industry, which has seen a new crop of rivals enter, most using open-source Linux software.
The shift to an open source foundation required a change in Symbian's board. It had been owned by a consortium of rivals including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Panasonic, Siemens, and Samsung. The new Symbian Foundation is being steered by a board of 10 members: five from phone manufacturers Nokia, LG Electronics, Motorola, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson, and five from network operators and chipmakers AT&T, NTT DoCoMo, Vodafone, STMicroelectronics, and Texas Instruments.
The new 10-member board unanimously approved the appointment of Lee, even though Nokia is Symbian's owner and its biggest customer. "It's hard to imagine a stronger candidate than the leader of an organization responsible for Symbian's dominant user interface, but we are still surprised the board has chosen a Nokia employee, potentially reinforcing the Finnish company's influence on the foundation," said a research note from mobile consultancy CCS Insight.
In the past it would have been "inconceivable" to have a handset maker chair Symbian, says Richard Windsor, a mobile analyst at brokerage Nomura Securities. But times have changed, and he notes, the fact that Williams worked for Nokia for just two years and agreed to give up all equity participation in Nokia goes some way towards alleviating concerns about his independence. Still, to maintain his credibility analysts said Williams will have to ensure the voices of rival handset operators, such as Sony Ericsson and Motorola, are also heard.
Williams' appointment comes as Symbian is facing competition on many fronts. With the rise of Apple's iPhone, touch screens have become essential to any manufacturer's range, so the Symbian platform will have to support them. The iPhone's success also puts more emphasis on developing attractive, user-friendly interfaces.
But, notes Windsor, the pressure to compete with Apple is causing more technology to be crammed into phones earlier, raising the cost of building smartphones. That means that price declines to consumers are slowing or stopping entirely. That's not good news as economic recession looms and people have less disposable income to spend on gizmos.
It is already hurting short to medium term growth of smartphones, leading Nomura to forecast only 25% growth to 177.4 million units this year. The forecast for 2009 is 20% growth but it could be smaller if the global economy continues on its downward spiral.Resource - BusinessWeek
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