Many remain skeptical about Android and are sniffing around it at best, but Symbian CEO Nigel Clifford is all-in for the open source movement, according to a recent interview. Sure, the Symbian Foundation and their talks with Google are a bit of a giveaway, but it’s good to hear it all coming right from the horse’s mouth. Nigel talks a fair bit about the importance of developers, lowering boundaries for entry, and how the market’s changed since they’ve taken the lead (including his reactions to new competitors). While he’s generally thumbs-up for open source, he comes off as unenthused about Linux-based systems.
“In terms of mobile Linux I’d rather be where I am than anywhere near mobile Linux … If you look at the fragmentation, if you look at the amount of time it’s taken anyone to produce anything usable with mobile Linux and the expense that they’ve gone to to do that… “
Whether or not he’s including Android in there is a bit of a mystery. What do you guy think? Will Android fragment in the same way desktop Linux has? Will the Symbian Foundation offer a more palatable development environment?
[via Silicon]