Going Open Source Works to Nokia’s Advantage
June 28, 2008 by Rico Mossesgeld
Filed under Cellphones
Internetnews.com reports on Nokia’s bid to buy out all of Symbian (spending $410 Million in the process) and offer “a new, royalty-free mobile software platform.”
This obviously works to Nokia’s advantage. As the top dog in the smartphone world, Nokia would like to make it harder for new players to profitably compete in the market. At least, that’s what the article implies.
It’s the Software, Stupid
That makes sense. We are really entering a period when it’s the software, not hardware, that differentiates products from each other. We all know how Apple pushes its mobile variant of Safari as a valuable feature of its iPhone, and how Nokia itself likes to connote the superiority of its S60 platform.
By opening up Symbian and perhaps S60 to everyone’s modification, Nokia will potentially tap the efforts of passionate amateursówhile their platform may eventually enjoy the fruits of professional-quality mobile applications.
Of course, this will definitely affect the Finnish marker’s bottom line. But when you’re number one, would you really care? Especially when you make it harder for your rivals to make a profit that they can reinvest into their mobile businesses? If the most dominant smartphone platform suddenly becomes free for all, competitors will have to reevaluate their pricing schemes just to stay competitive.
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Check out what others are saying about this post...[...] will eventually merge, since both platforms are pursuing and open-source-based strategy (see Why Going Open Source Works to Nokia’s Advantage). The former is the mobile OS initiative of Google, with the latter the most widely-used mobile OS [...]