A lot of wild speculation has reached me this week, along the lines that Nokia is planning to ditch the Symbian platform in favour of Maemo (a Linux-based alternative).
The speculation traces its roots back to a MobileCrunch “leaked” exclusive, with the following story:
- A future version of Maemo, called “Harmattan”, will be used for at least one Nokia phone (previously Maemo has been restricted to web-browsing tablets);
- It has already been announced that Nokia and Intel are cooperating on “a joint project called oFono which aims to build an open source telephony framework for the Linux platform”;
- Therefore, it is said, “the eventual plan is to … phase out S60 all together”;
- Therefore, it is suggested (using even dodgier logic) “the eventual plan is to phase out the Symbian platform”.
With this speculation in the air, analysts are coming up with some fantastic hypotheses. For example, from one email (written by Richard Windsor, Industry Specialist, Nomura Securities) that reached my inbox:
I suspect that Symbian is not good enough for some of the functionality Nokia has planned over the medium term… Two technologies in question are Symmetric Multi Processing (SMP) and Multithreading.
These hypotheses are particularly surprising, given the excellent lab demos of SMP versions of the Symbian platform – and given the fact that the Symbian platform has been multithreading splendidly in devices since the adoption of the EKA2 kernel variant more than three years ago.
Let’s get back to the basic point. Here’s an analogy.
Suppose you live in a block of flats. Next, suppose that you find out that one of your neighbours in the block, Olli Pekka, is taking out contents insurance for his flat. That is, in the case of fire or theft (etc), he will be reimbursed the cost of the contents. Do you reason as follows to yourself:
- Oh my goodness, Olli Pekka knows something that I don’t know;
- I suspect that the flooring material of the flat must be flawed – maybe it’s too combustible;
- I suspect that Olli Pekka must know that a gang of robbers will be targeting this block of flats…?
This kind of thinking confuses an insurance policy against the small risk of some unknown failure, with the conclusion that there must be a fundamental flaw.
To my mind, it makes perfect sense for phone companies to investigate at least two modern mobile operating systems. For example, Nokia is investigating Maemo (now coupled with oFono) in parallel to its main usage of the Symbian platform. This guards against the small risk of some unknown failure in the main platform. It does not mean that some fundamental flaws (… SMP … multi-threading …) have been identified!
What’s more, Nokia’s experiments with the open source Maemo platform, extending five years or more, surely provided the company with very valuable learnings about the potential strengths and weaknesses of open source. It’s likely that these learnings boosted the confidence of Nokia to support the transformation of the Symbian platform from closed source to open source. In this sense, there’s useful cross-fertilisation between Maemo and Symbian.
Let’s return to the apparent rumour that “the eventual plan is to … phase out S60 all together”. I suspect this probably derives from a misunderstanding of the declared intent to replace the Avkon UI libraries (which have characterised S60 over the years) with new Qt-based Orbit UI libraries – in Symbian^4. Of course, replacing Avkon with Orbit does not imply a replacement of the Symbian platform by Maemo!
Happily, there’s plenty of scope for further beneficial cross-fertilisation between Maemo and Symbian – just as there will be beneficial cross-fertilisation between other mobile operating systems and Symbian. For the sake of the entire industry, let’s build bridges wherever possible.
12 Comments
Thanks for explaining that Symbian and Maemo can exist together in harmony.Many “experts” feel that overlapping uses of Maemo and Symbian is dangerous because they will “eat each others profits”. I don’t knoe why thet do not think of “insurance”.
With QT being made for both platforms and PIPS on Symbian I hope lot of programs will be made available on both platforms.
Well, I’ve seen it time after time; we just have to get used to bloggers reading some official statement, jumping to conclusions, exagerating facts, and publishing it as the truth.
And then a whole mob more reading and quoting and shouting the first as gospel, without researching or even checking the sources. Often even if they’d bothered to read the first posts source they’d understand it’s not true, but well, someone’s already blogged it, so it must be true.
There’s a lot of positive benefits from blogging, but we this is a downside.
I think it’s more subtle than this post and the comments indicate…
…yes, Maemo might have a different architecture which I can imagine provides insurance against future requirements not being fulfillable on Symbian OS.
What I don’t understand is when Nokia fund the development thrice over (in a poor econmic climate too) of detailed code to yield technology that is hard to get right: example Bluetooth. Bluetooth is hard to get right because of its peer-peer application level interoperability.
The Symbian version of this technology has shipped in vast numbers and has “hardened” as a consequence. Should not Nokia be investing effort to port that over to Maemo rather than fund developers to do it all over again?
Can the insurance plan be componentised like good software? Can good software be re-used in different architectures – if it’s good enough for the applications (Qt, PIPS based apps), why isn’t it good enough for “sysem” components?
Isn’t it fun to see how random dudes seem to believe that they have such a good understanding of what a giant like Nokia does that they think are smart enough to predict the future or to give advices?
Here’s an old teaching for those fools: A dog dies from too much walking, a fool from worrying about other’s business.
And isn’t it sad that all this started from a couple of images leaked by some idiot or nicely photoshopped by a gifted prankster? Now it will take a lot of work to counteract the damage done by one misguided individual.
@John,
>And isn’t it sad that all this started from a couple of images leaked by some idiot or nicely photoshopped by a gifted prankster?
To be clear, I’m not ruling out the possibility of Nokia in due course launching a phone-like device based on Maemo. The mobile space is big enough to support a large number of different kinds of device.
But I do object to black-and-white arguments along the lines of “if Maemo then no Symbian”. In the same way, I object to the idea that “if Maemo increases, then Symbian is bound to decrease”.
// David W.
Hi David,
You have to love speculation and supposed ”leaks’- You have to love analysts who clearly do not understand the technology they supposedly write about.
My observation (and my personal view) on SMP is not the adoption of the technology which is straight forward, rather the upgrade of the ecosystem to support SMP and ensure the best possible experience. Especially as software in the ecosystem can vary widely. I personally believe that it is the RTOS that will be dropped longer-term (when they actually need to move to SMP) as the ecosystem effort will not be worth it. Again this is my personal view, but based on my experience.
Cheers,
Kevin
It never fails to amaze me how badly researched a lot of the “news” out there is. When some blog gets something wrong it’s no big deal, but when more respected news sites, magazines, newspapers and even analysts start to get things wrong it gets a little worrying since a lot more people listen to them and trust them.
Besides speculating on some kind of impeding doom for Symbian based on a rumoured screenshot, there was a lot of confusion about oFono too. If you go to the oFono site it quite clearly says it’s a set of APIs and a framework for integrating telephony stacks in Linux. And yet, I saw several blogs, sites and forums with headlines along the lines of “OMG, Nokia and Intel are making a new Linux-based mobile OS called oFono!”.
What ever happened to journalists researching their stories?
@John Doe
>>Isn’t it fun to see how random dudes seem to believe that they have such a good understanding of what a giant like Nokia does that they think are smart enough to predict the future or to give advices?
Yeah…..
But then outside prespective has its own value.Somebody who is NOT in Nokia may or may not give better prediction because
1. He is not emotionally attached to the decisions of company.
2. He will not be Biased.
3. His Future does not depend on the decisions.
4. Nokia is run by humans and “raandom dude” too is a human.And Humans may make mistakes.
Consider decision by Nokia to put 64 MB ram on N95 classic.
Consider decision of Nokia to NOT put N-GAGE on earlier E series sets.
I welcome nokia to adopt another mobile platform, maybe even about time. Why not, every other manufecature supports more than one platform. Just because its nokia, assumptions must be made? Ridiculs. Why not speculate other vender.
David,
initially I liked your analogy. But the more I thought about it I don’t think it is quite right.
Here is a modified analogy: Olli Pekka is interested in contents insurance, but instead he has bought another flat in a different area and people are wondering where he will spend most time and where he will put most of his furniture.
It is a good move for Nokia to develop Maemo but the move appears to be validated by worries about Symbian’s (and previously S60s) ability to grab the mindshare it needs to attract developers and future customers.
SF’s success will be judged by how it assuages these worries and develops new enthusiasm in the platform. The foundation’s existence is a good start to developing this I hope.
I can’t stop thinking that this script has been played before, about 10+ years ago, with Geoworks OS (that run on the first Nokia Communicator) and EPOC32. Only then it was much cheaper and easier to implement the script.
I have absolutely no doubt that Nokia, will indeed release Maemo (Hildon anyone?) based phones and tablet-like devices which could have otherwise been done on Symbian OS + some GUI like S60.
I also have no doubt that the time will come for Nokia to assess whether it is viable to keep running with three handset platforms/OSs (NOS, Symbian OS and Maemo).
I also expect that somewhere inside Nokia, right now, engineers are looking at a hybrid based on EKA2’s Nanokernel and a personality layer (such as what Symbian OS is in-fact, on top of the EKA2 Nanokernel, as it says on the book:-) that can accomodate Linux/POSIX APIs but keep EKA2’s excellent Real Time characteristics and design.
Nokia is becoming (for their good or bad) an “internet company” and is getting increasingly less attached to the platforms it uses, as long as it is cheap enough to integrate them into their devices and they control many of the diversifiers needed for their products. Yes, in that respect Linux, does make sense, but it is a damn hard job to make a phone whatever the platform is and really the problems in most cases do not stem from the OS.
Hi John,
>I can’t stop thinking that this script has been played before, about 10+ years ago, with Geoworks OS (that run on the first Nokia Communicator) and EPOC32.
These thoughts have crossed my mind too – especially since I well remember being on site with Nokia early 1997, before it had been announced that Nokia would use Symbian OS (known then as EPOC32), and some Nokia people asked me and my Psion Software colleagues to stay in a meeting room a bit longer to avoid the risk of some Geoworks people bumping into us!
However, present-day Symbian OS has much more flexibility than GeOS c. 1997. The GeOS system was in practice restricted to 32k code and data chunks, which meant it was very clear it had a limited future. In contrast, Symbian OS has had plenty of architectural runway added to it over the years.
>…it is a damn hard job to make a phone whatever the platform is and really the problems in most cases do not stem from the OS.
I take strong issue with any view that all mobile operating systems are somehow interchangeable – see my posting Operating Systems Matter.
However, I do accept that, in the end, the winning platform will be determined, not just by the quality of the technology in that platform, but in the productivity and vibrancy of the developer ecosystem that surrounds that technology. That’s why Symbian’s move to open source, as well as our other ongoing initiatives to improve the developer experience, are extremely timely.
// David W.
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