The nonprofit foundation that controls it announced that Symbian, the mobile phone OS that powers roughly half of the world’s smartphones, is set to open its code to developers four months ahead of schedule.

The full Symbian 3 enterprise mobility platform will be made available under several open-source licenses, according to ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes. The code itself is currently available for download via the Symbian Foundation’s wiki, he reports.

Symbian Foundation executive director Lee Williams told the Guardian newspaper that "the development community is now empowered to shape the future of the mobile industry, and rapid innovation on a global scale will be the result," adding that, under the original release schedule, Symbian might not have been made open-source for several more years.

Among tech pundits, the move is widely seen as one of desperation, as Symbian’s formerly dominant market share is slashed by newcomers like Android and the iPhone OS. Network World’s Brad Reed says that "Android is projected to become the second-most used mobile operating system behind Symbian by the end of 2012."

This entry was posted by Mobility Management News Desk on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 3:53 pm and is filed under Managing Mobile Devices News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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