I’m Naoki Kanetani from Kanrikogaku Kenkyusho. I have been involved in Symbian for nearly 15 years including EPOC32 period.
I believe the great ambition, or motivation, of people associated with Symbian to develop a world-class OS for portable information terminals, especially mobile phones, was achieved along with software manufacturers, handset manufacturers, hardware manufactures and carriers, and now Symbian OS is moving step by step toward a new ambition.
I look forward very much to seeing the progress of new Symbian Platform releases and Symbian Community under Symbian Foundation management.
Japanese mobile operators have been releasing their mobile phones in line with their own direction.
NTT DOCOMO has mounted an IC card function in their mobile phones and started supporting people’s daily life by allowing subscribers to use social infrastructure services with the IC card function.
Softbank Mobile is apparently heading to support family life by adding WiFi function to all the lineups, and releasing WiFi enabled digital photo frames. I’m not sure which direction au is looking at.
In Japan, “Android” and “cloud computing” are talked every day on the Internet though, in contrast, I’ve heard nothing about Symbian in the last six months.
“Japan Android Group” was established a year ago. Since then, the group has been aggressively doing activities such as speeches, study sessions and exhibitions all over Japan.
A variety of people are its members; University professors, university students, people from handset manufacturers who purely pursue the possibilities of Android, and software developers who think about next-generation applications and services through the group interaction.
One interesting thing is that not handset manufacturers or computer manufactures but peripherals manufacturers and engineers who engage in non computer-related electric products are also its members.
They were enough to display only specific data to the functions on the screen since their devices do not require such functions, for example, browser and/or email of smartphone.
Also, non-general purpose OS made them gave up adding new functions even when they wanted. However, with Android, it’s relatively, or dramatically, easy to incorporate such functions into peripherals and home appliances. They expect that small products which are usually placed on a wall or floor might be put next to the dining table if Android is mounted to those products with LCD panel. In fact, members from various fields in the peripherals, software, etc. gather together to discover new possibilities.
No one sees how this movement will change our future, but I can at least say that Android’s possibilities are maximized with people who are not involved in mobile phones industry. In other words, Android generates the motivation for other industries, and encourages them to bring out many kinds of outputs.
I think one of the challenges for people associated with Symbian is how to encourage other people to use Symbian at that time that Symbian Platform is moved to EPL completely, and is released to the public.
I have asked one of my colleagues what the difference is between Symbian and Android from a community standpoint. He said, “Hmm…It looks like that the Symbian Foundation world doesn’t accept any kinds of people, and only people who really want to use Symbian can join”. (I paraphrased what he said a little) “Why do you think so?”, he replied, “Robustness is developed with everyone’s cooperation but is collapsed easily by only one person who don’t cooperate. ”.
The Symbian world has established its position by putting the greatest importance on quality including robustness and power-saving mechanism for a stand-alone handset device. Android phones, on the other hand, aim to operate and refer to information on the other side of the internet in the data centric or web centric view. As a result, he thought it looks ok to create Android mobile phones and software all together at a stretch.
This means that Symbian Community is formed by the people who have a mind to secure quality such as robustness for all the software levels from low level to high level, and Android Community is created by people who explore Android’s possibilities anyway.
“It’s understandable…” but I see that the Symbian world is also going to the direction to fulfill users’ demand to use Symbian via a browser while maximizing the value of Symbian Platform with the quality of each mobile device unit.
The Symbian world, therefore, might require other community formation that is apart from a quality-oriented approach from low software level such as kernel and system library to middleware and higher application levels.
The word “Cloud Computing” is now booming in Japan but “Cloud Sourcing” has not been experienced and is difficult to be accepted by Japanese people due to the different culture. I, however, hope to develop Symbian community in Japan which creates data-centric value (or other value) together with Symbian Foundation and its community members by referring to other countries’ approaches and cases and involving people on the other side of the cloud to understand attractive points and value of Symbian Platform.
Let’s cooperate with each other and move forward.
Thanks so much for the post and the insights Naomi. I hope you will be a regular contributor here.
This is a more positive comparison between Android and Symbian. I agree that Symbian needs to incorporate more different perspectives than just try to be the perfect OS for manufacturers.
With alll respect Naomi-san, you should let you colleague know that we’re the ones accepting contributions and that the core Android platform is largely closed and managed by a team of around 300 people. It’s precisely the opposite of what your colleague believes. He’s right that robustness is fundamental to the Symbian platform, but there are better ways to achieve this than closing your doors and not letting anything in.
Brendan I’m sure you are right about what you say – however what I took from the post is that Android are out there getting involved. For example in the auto industry where I’ve been doing a little work lately Android is the proposed platform for Continental’s AutolinQ connected car project (it’s taking place out of Germany I think). People want to see Symbian at the heart of those projects being regarded as the natural chocie for the wider industry partnerships that are becoming available.
I think this post is more about the atmosphere of the development community in Japan. I see this a lot in the States as well.
If you look at Android development, Google sends a clear message to developers about what tools and packages will be supported and what the bright lines of the single SDK license are.
In contrast, Symbian is still a moving target with regards to new platforms and Qt licensing. One big roadblock I see is whether smaller mobile developers should invest in Qt in the near-term. The relevant questions are: How large is the maemo or Symbian^3 app market going to be vice other platforms next year? Even if we select Qt/Symbian now, when Symbian^3 comes out, how much do we really have to revisit S50v5 apps to get them to run on the 2010/2011 devices?
Even more basic, regarding the Qt license, why should a small developer have to get a legal opinion about exposure in various jurisdictions from the LGPL regarding static linking? Or is the opinion on the streets to just buy Nokia’s commercial Qt SDK license to be safe?
These risks may overshadow the clear strengths of Symbian.
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Hi Goran – I contacted our legal counsel about this and it’s something they feel is better covered by Nokia – let me see what I can do to chase that up over the break.
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I think Naoki got ht
Sorry for previous, unfinished, comment,
I think Naoki got the point in his post.
I’m a mobile developer for almost 6 years now and I clearly see that mobile comuting world is changing.
It is difficult to say that, but, if no-one will do something, Symbian as wide-spread platform will die.
Symbian’s problem with iPhone and Android is that these too platforms are seen as rebels if you compare them to Symbian World, where everything is too oficial, to expensive (signing applications) and too restrictive (capabilitties allowance).
On the other hand, Symbian OS got technical potential and I’ve seen that young people want to learn how to program for it if they got good teachers.
I think Symbian Foundation has the whole 2010 to do 1 or 2 steps to resurect this platform. Maybe some spectacular open-source project, maybe some great Symbian based phone from Nokia, maybe something else, but as a platform Symbian needs the spark to show that great things can be achieved on it.
Otherwise it can be difficult.
Great post anyway Naoki.
Marcinos
Hi Marcinos – and thanks for dropping by and taking the trouble to comment. There are lots of possible responses to what you are saying – for example I agree about that rebel status. One Apple exec recently called Apps Store a chance for the little guy”. So not just rebel but David and lots of other Davids lining up against a few Goliaths.
The Foundation clearly needs to do more in a number of areas – but let me try this argument on you. One of its tasks is to grow a community and one feature of that has to be a bit of hands-off – the decisions that get made somewhere along the line have to emerge from the sentiments of the community or as a response to them. SO my point is when you say Symbian has to do something – can you be very specific? Is there something you can say, with precision, that the Foundation and community can do to inspire you in 2010?
Hi again,
I think responsibility for creating a seed that will grow as a strong community belongs to the Symbian Foundation.
For example, I’m involved in a Symbian OS (S60) open-source project and the best place I can find for my code is source-forge.com. So, maybe some dedicated SVN servers that hobby developers can use is a good start ? (not only hobby developers, but also contributors, etc.)
The requirement is that it must be easy to get access to this server (without months of requesting for permissions, etc. – though I don’t know what’s the current state of SF – maybe these servers already exist)
Also someone from SF can start organizing development groups to develop new software for Symbian OS. It can be group of students + some hobby developers for start. But also there’s a need to attract some professional develoopers to contribute and the only way, I think, is to offer them money
(maybe via some coding contests, etc.)
Sometime ago I wanted to gather a group of people who will help m help me with development of my gfx engine for mobile devices and I found this very difficult task.
Maybe SF can create some sort of forum where project-leaders can create projects and request for people and also developers can browse projects to select the one they want to join.
This would be good start I think.
Let me know if I can help in doing this somehow.
Marcios
Hi Marcinos – I’ve pushed your suggestions out to a couple of folks at the Foundation. It is holidays here so they may not be back for a day or two. Thanks for contributing and I hope the thread develops some more.
@Goran: In response to your licensing question regarding Qt, the static linking issue is not new or unique to Qt and impacts all software licensed under the LGPL, but please note that this issue will not affect Symbian or Maemo application development given that the Qt libraries will be pre-installed on Nokia’s Symbian and Maemo devices. It is also our hope that other Symbian licensees will also ship their devices with Qt pre-installed. In addition, there are already millions of Qt-based devices in the market that you will also be able to target by adopting Qt. For an in depth look at the static linking issue raised previously on the Qt Blog, please see my comments here: http://blog.qt.nokia.com/2009/11/30/qt-making-the-right-licensing-decision/.”
i would not consider learning c++ symbian, but Qt i would like to learn that. Qt is better documented and easier especially if you use pyQt.
but, one of my concerns (similar to Goran’s above) with Qt is the expensive price for the commercial license. if i wanted to submit an app on the ovi store, then im assuming i need a commercial license to do that. compare the cost with the iphone prices for submitting apps. Its only $99, and a 30% cut in profits you make from selling the app.
nokia should have some sort of similar affordable pricing setup like apple’s. i would like to write nokia apps in Qt but after seeing the price im going to choose iphone or android.
also nokia needs to improve its after sales support.
Thank you for the post Naoki and the great information. I found it very informative and useful.
@Andy–I’m glad to hear that you are a fan of Qt. I just wanted to clarify that a commercial license is not a requirement for hosting an app on the Ovi Store. Qt is licensed under both a commercial license and the open source Lesser General Public License (LGPL) v. 2.1 license in order to best serve the wide range of Qt users. If you create an app that meets the requirements of Section 6 of the LGPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-2.1.txt) such as dynamically linking your app to libraries already present on a device, you may license it under terms that are essentially of your choosing (with only a few restrictions in Section 6 of the LGPL). You can learn more about licensing options at http://qt.nokia.com/products/licensing or http://blog.qt.nokia.com/2009/11/30/qt-making-the-right-licensing-decision/
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