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Symbian Software

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Symbian Software Ltd.
Company typePrivate
IndustryBusiness Software & Services
Founded1998
Defunct2 December 2008
FateAcquired by Nokia Corporation
HeadquartersSouthwark, London
Key people
Juha Christensen, Colly Myers, David Levin, Nigel Clifford
ProductsSymbian OS
Number of employees
1178 (2007)
ParentNokia

Symbian Ltd. was a software development and licensing consortium company, known for the Symbian OS, a smartphone operating system, and other related technologies.[1] Its headquarters were in Southwark, London, England, with other offices opened in Cambridge, Sweden, Silicon Valley, Japan, India, China, South Korea, and Australia.

It was established on 24 June 1998 as a partnership between Psion, Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola and Sony, to exploit the convergence between PDAs and mobile phones, and a joint-effort to prevent Microsoft from extending its desktop monopoly into the mobile devices market.[2] Ten years to the day after it was established, on 24 June 2008, Nokia announced that they intended to acquire the shares that they did not already own, at a cost of €264 million.[3] On the same day the Symbian Foundation was announced, with the aim to "provide royalty-free software and accelerate innovation",[4] and the pledged contribution of the Symbian OS and user interfaces.

The acquisition of Symbian Ltd. by Nokia was completed on 2 December 2008,[5] at which point all Symbian employees became Nokia employees. Transfer of relevant Symbian Software Ltd. leases, trademarks and domain names from Nokia to the Symbian Foundation was completed in April 2009.[6] On 18 July 2009, Nokia's Symbian professional services department, which was not transferred to the Symbian Foundation, was sold to the Accenture consulting company.[7]

Formation

Symbian Ltd. was the brainchild of Psion's next generation mobile operating system project following the 32-bit version of EPOC. Psion approached the other four companies and decided to work together on a full software suite including kernel, drivers and user interface.[8] Much of Symbian's initial intellectual property came from the software arm of Psion.

Symbian OS

Main article: Symbian OS

Symbian Ltd developed and licensed Symbian OS, an operating system for advanced mobile phones and PDAs. Symbian Ltd wanted the system to have different user interface layers, unlike Microsoft's offerings. Psion originally created several interfaces or "reference designs", which would later end up as Pearl (Smartphone), Quartz (Palm-like PDA) and Crystal (Clamshell PDA). One early design called Emerald also ended up in the market on the Ericsson R380.

Nokia created the Series 60 (from Pearl), Series 80 and Series 90 platforms (both from Crystal), whilst UIQ Technology, which was a subsidiary of Symbian Ltd. as the time, created UIQ (from Quartz). Another interface was MOAP(S) from NTT DoCoMo. Despite being partners at Symbian Ltd, the different backers of each interface were effectively competing with each other's software. This became a prominent point in February 2004 when UIQ, which focuses on pen devices, announced its foray in traditional keyboard devices, competing head-on with Nokia's Series 60 offering whilst Nokia was in the process of acquiring Psion's remaining stake in Symbian Ltd. to take overall control of the company.[9]

Shareholding

Before its outright purchase by Nokia in December 2008, Symbian Ltd. was owned by Nokia (56.3%), Ericsson (15.6%), Sony Ericsson (13.1%), Matsushita (10.5%), and Samsung (4.5%).

The company's founder shareholders were Psion, Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola. Motorola sold its stake in the company to Psion and Nokia in September 2003.[10] Psion's stake was bought by Nokia, Matsushita, Siemens AG and Sony Ericsson in July 2004.[11]

Licensees

Licensees of Symbian's operating system were:

Key people

Symbian Ltd's CEO at the time of acquisition was Nigel Clifford.[12] Previous CEOs included David Levin, who left in 2005 to head United Business Media PLC, and the founding CEO, Colly Myers, who left the company in 2002[13] to found IssueBits, the company behind SMS information service Any Question Answered (AQA).[14]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Symbian Ltd". BusinessWeek. Retrieved 26 July 2009.
  2. ^ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/24/andrew_on_symbian/
  3. ^ "Nokia to acquire Symbian Limited to enable evolution of the leading open mobile platform". Nokia. 24 June 2008. Retrieved 26 July 2009.
  4. ^ "Mobile leaders to unify the Symbian software platform and set the future of mobile free". Nokia. 24 June 2008. Retrieved 26 July 2009.
  5. ^ "Nokia acquires Symbian Limited". Nokia. Retrieved 10 June 2015.
  6. ^ "Can you feel it?". Symbian Blog. Symbian Foundation. 2 April 2009. Retrieved 26 July 2009.
  7. ^ Prodhan, Georgina (17 July 2009). "Accenture to buy Symbian services unit from Nokia". Reuters. Retrieved 26 July 2009.
  8. ^ http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/The_story_behind_Sony_Ericson_and_UIQ_Technology.php
  9. ^ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/02/24/ui_wars_tore_symbian_apart/
  10. ^ Kawamoto, Dawn (23 August 2003). "Motorola to sell off its Symbian stake". CNet News. CNet. Retrieved 26 July 2009.
  11. ^ Cripps, Tony (8 July 2004). "Symbian's Autonomy Assured as Owners Split Psion Stake". Computergram International. Retrieved 26 July 2009.
  12. ^ "Nigel Clifford". LinkedIn. Retrieved 26 July 2009.
  13. ^ Lettice, John (15 February 2002). "Symbian CEO Myers exits suddenly". The Register. Retrieved 26 July 2009.
  14. ^ Orlowski, Andrew (21 July 2004). "Symbian founder on mobile past, present and future". The Register. Retrieved 26 July 2009.

Update: Symbian link found here does not exist anymore

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