Processing .....please wait.. 
The article has been forwarded.... 
News >> Technology >>
Vendors crave for Android, Symbian Foundation to balance it
By siliconindia
|
Tuesday, 09 November 2010, 17:47 IST
Bangalore: The Symbian Foundation announced plans to scale back and shed most of its staff. The organization will become a legal entity that is responsible for managing Symbian licensing. After Nokia acquired Symbian in 2008 with the aim of opening the platform's source code now, it will take the central role in guiding the platform's technical direction, but aims to continue making the platform available under an alternative open model.
Nokia hoped to work collaboratively with other Symbian stakeholders to modernize the operating system and expand adoption. The failure to retain Symbian hardware vendors has evidently forced the Symbian Foundation which relies on funding from its hardware partners' to rethink its role.
Nokia's Senior Vice President of Symbian devices, Jo Harlow, gave Nokia's perspective on the news. She contends that the Symbian platform will remain strong despite the move to scale down the foundation. Nokia is still committed to developing Symbian and will continue to invest in the platform as it has in the past.
It's not yet clear how Symbian licensing will be impacted by the change. The development model will likely be open in the sense that code will continue to be made available, but Nokia hasn't entirely decided how it wants to approach that from a licensing perspective. The foundation will not have a role in governance, however.