re: Nokia's Modifiable Series 60 Source & Samsung
Nokia' s series 60 is a comprehensive software platform for smart phones that Nokia licenses as a source code product to other mobile handset manufacturers. It works on top of the Symbian operating system, which Samsung licensed in March.
"The Series 60 licensing model with access to the source-code will give us the opportunity to contribute to and influence the platform development," says Samsung's ByungDuck Cho.
Nokia's way to enforce the compatibility issue is to include a sharing clause in the license agreements. The licensees agree to give to Nokia all the code changes that have to with phone compatibility issues.
>> Samsung Opens A Third Front Into Handset Games
Timo Poropudas
Nordic Wireless Watch
August 31, 2002
Samsung became the third major cellular phone manufacturer to license Nokia's Series 60 platform for their next generation of smart phones. The agreement comes a week after Samsung's Microsoft-based mobile phone received an approval from the U.S. US Federal Communications Commission. Samsung also makes a phone that uses the Palm operating system.
The smart handset software platform war has been reduced to a battle between Microsoft's Smartphone 2002 and Nokia's Series 60. Palm-based phones are not considered a serious entry in this competition. Smartphone 2002 was earlier known as Stinger and it has its supporters, too. With the Samsung agreement Nokia seems to strengthen considerably its position against Microsoft.
Siemens and Matsushita have already earlier taken out Series 60 licenses. With Samsung the Series 60 licensees have 60 percent market share of the worldwide mobile handset market. However, it remains to be seen how the market share develops in the smartphones since it is only a small fraction of today's total handset market.
Nokia' s series 60 is a comprehensive software platform for smart phones that Nokia licenses as a source code product to other mobile handset manufacturers. It works on top of the Symbian operating system, which Samsung licensed in March. The Microsoft Smartphone 2002 is essentially a Pocket PC operating system with smart phone extension.
Series 60 Source Code Is The Key
"The Series 60 licensing model with access to the source-code will give us the opportunity to contribute to and influence the platform development," says Samsung's ByungDuck Cho, senior vice president, Mobile Communications R & D team. A license to Smartphone 2002 package does not include the source code and keeps Microsoft firmly in charge of the future development.
"Nokia's aim is to increase the compatibility between smart phones," says Pertti Korhonen, executive vice president, Mobile Software, Nokia.
Nokia's way to enforce the compatibility issue is to include a sharing clause in the license agreements. The licensees agree to give to Nokia all the code changes that have to with phone compatibility issues.
Nokia also is continuing discussions with other handset manufacturers.
Nokia and Samsung compete in several telecom fields but they also have an ongoing business relationship. A year ago Samsung began to ship 64-megabit DRAM chips for Nokia mobile phones. Yesterday Bloomberg reported that Nokia has ordered 15 million color screens from Samsung. <<
Earlier ...
>> Samsung Licenses Nokia’s Source-Code For Mobile Devices
Ilya Poropudas
Nordic Wireless Watch
August 30, 2002
Samsung and Nokia announced on Frinday an agreement in which Samsung will license Nokia’s Series 60 platform for their next generation of smart phones. Series 60 is a comprehensive software platform for smart phones that’s licensed as a source code product to mobile handset manufacturers.
“Series 60 is an ideal software platform for advanced smart phones. The licensing model with access to the source-code will give us the opportunity to contribute to and influence the platform development,” says ByungDuck Cho, Senior Vice President of Samsung Electronics’s Mobile Communications R & D team.
“We welcome Samsung to the community of Series 60 licensees,” said Nokia’s Pertti Korhonen, executive vice president of Mobile Software.
“Nokia’s aim is to increase the compatibility between smart phones, since ultimately that will lead to seamless and easy-to-use mobile services,” Korhonen continued.
The Series 60 platform supports MMS, Java(TM) and WAP/XHTML. The platform consists of the key telephony and personal information management applications, browser and messaging clients and a modifiable user interface.
The licensees can integrate the software platform into their own application-driven phone designs and thus speed up the rollout of new phone models. <<
- Eric - |
