Analysts praise Symbian Nokia deal

Open platform will drive data services, says Ovum

The Symbian deal should encourage collaboration and adoption by all players in the field

Nokia's acquisition of Symbian and the development of the Symbian Foundation will help drive mobile data services and revenues, according to analyst firm Ovum.

The Symbian Foundation plans to abandon the old royalty-based revenue model and instead make the platform free to all foundation members, generating revenue from a $1,500 annual membership fee.

Ovum principal analyst Adam Leach said that fragmentation within the software platform market is currently the biggest single barrier to mobile data services and revenues.

Leach believes that Linux Mobile and now the Symbian Foundation are perfectly suited to help solve this issue and drive greater development, which in turn would help service providers offer a greater range of richer mobile services.

"The creation of the Symbian Foundation reflects the fact that Symbian's competitive landscape has changed rapidly over the past year as new entrants and old competitors increase their influence," he said.

The analyst highlighted the growing success of Linux Mobile and the increased market anticipation around Google's Android platform as indications of this change.

Ovum believes that this acceptance of open source principles is positive news for Symbian and for the industry as it encourages collaboration and adoption by all players in the field.

"This is what the Symbian ecosystem needs to push its market penetration to the next level and achieve real momentum beyond Nokia's volumes," Leach explained.

The analyst concluded that this new direction will help drive the original intention when Symbian was created, namely to develop an industry standard that is owned "by the industry" rather than being controlled by a single source.