Expanding the Symbian platform
By Dusan Belic on Tuesday, April 18th, 2006 at 8:14 AM PST In General, Symbian
Today, I’m ranting about the possibilities of Symbian platform beyond mobile phones. Symbian Inc. is the mobile phone OS development company, 
but as mobile phones are getting smarter and new needs arrive, maybe they could jump-in in the other markets. Just a thought, but think for a moment – one day we will all need the synchronized solution(s). Will we use web for that? Can we have a single OS in all our devices? That’s what Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) hopes for. Can Symbian handle that (pressure)? I hope so.
One of the things that made me think in this direction is the announcement of the Sony’s ebook reader PRS-500. Cool thing – would want one for myself. That made me wonder, why wouldn’t Symbian develop a platform for such and similar devices? Something like Maemo, just powered by Symbian OS (plus, I want an option to rotate the screen like on all the Palms and Pocket PCs).
Also, what about pure mp3 players. Personally, I love the all-in-one device concept, but I’m also certain that many people like that their mp3 player only plays music, and their mobile phone only, well, makes and receives phone calls. Symbian could find its place in the pure mp3 players as well.
Finally, what about the cars. Microsoft aims to be the OS in the cars as well.
I see 3 interesting factors (recent happenings or whatever they are):
- Nokia 770 Internet tablet,
- new Opera platform, and
- latest developments around Google (NSDQ: GOOG), ajax and all the web 2.0 buzz.
By mixing all these three together, I get this picture – one not-that-large Internet enabled device with very little software on it, since most of the software is run from the server. Someone, said Microsoft’s Ultra-Mobile PC (aka Project Origami)!?
Recently Google acquired Writely, the web-based word processor, meaning that you could make your documents online with ajax-powered browser (Opera platform). Online spreadsheet is on its way as well. There’s Google Calendar, and many DHTML games… Got my point? You can do many things online already!
In conclusion, there are many things Symbian could do to expand its platform. Ebook readers, mp3 players, Internet tablets, cars… Possibilities are infinite. So what is gonna be?
