Symbian
This article is about the operating
system . For other uses, see
Symbian (disambiguation) .
Not to be confused with Sybian.
Symbian
Developer Accentur
behalf of N
[1] (histori
Symbian
and Symb
Foundati
Written in C++ [2
OS family RTOS
Working state Discontin
Source model Closed so
[3] previo
open sou
Initial release 1997 as EP
Latest release Nokia Be
Feature Pa
2 October
Available in Multi-lin
Package manager Nokia Store
.sisx, .jad ,
Platforms ARM , x86 [
Kernel type Real Ti
Microker
EKA2
Default user interface Avkon
License Proprietar
previou
licensed u
EPL
Official website symbian.n
com (de
as of May
Symbian was a closed-source [3]
mobile operating system (OS) and
computing platform designed for
smartphones and currently
maintained by Accenture.[6]
Symbian was originally developed
by Symbian Ltd. , [7] as a descendant
of Psion's EPOC and runs
exclusively on ARM processors,
although an unreleased x86 port
existed. The current form of
Symbian is an open-source
platform developed by Symbian
Foundation in 2009, as the
successor of the original Symbian
OS. Symbian was used by many
major mobile phone brands, like
Samsung , Motorola , Sony Ericsson,
and above all by Nokia. It was the
most popular smartphone OS on a
worldwide average until the end of
2010, when it was overtaken by
Android.
Symbian rose to fame from its use
with the S60 platform built by Nokia,
first released in 2002 and powering
most Nokia smartphones. UIQ,
another Symbian platform, ran in
parallel, but these two platforms
were not compatible with each
other. Symbian^3, was officially
released in Q4 2010 as the
successor of S60 and UIQ, first
used in the Nokia N8 , to use a
single platform for the OS. In May
2011 an update, Symbian Anna, was
officially announced, followed by
Nokia Belle (previously Symbian
Belle) in August 2011. [8][9]
On 11 February 2011, Nokia
announced that it would use
Microsoft's Windows Phone OS as
its primary smartphone platform,
and Symbian will be its franchise
platform[ clarification needed] ,
dropping Symbian as its main
smartphone OS of choice. [10][11]
On 22 June 2011 Nokia made an
agreement with Accenture for an
outsourcing program. Accenture will
provide Symbian-based software
development and support services
to Nokia through 2016; about 2,800
Nokia employees became Accenture
employees as of October 2011. [12]
The transfer was completed on 30
September 2011. [6] The Nokia 808
PureView is officially the last
Symbian smartphone.[13]
History
Main articles: EPOC (operating
system) , S60 (software platform),
MOAP and UIQ
The Symbian logo until April 2009
Symbian originated from EPOC , an
operating system created by Psion
in the 1980s. In June 1998, Psion
Software became Symbian Ltd. , a
major joint venture between Psion
and phone manufacturers Ericsson,
Motorola , and Nokia .
Afterwards, different software
platforms were created for Symbian,
backed by different groups of
mobile phone manufacturers. They
include S60 ( Nokia, Samsung and
LG), UIQ (Sony Ericsson and
Motorola ) and MOAP(S) (Japanese
only such as Fujitsu , Sharp etc.).
In June 2008, Nokia announced the
acquisition of Symbian Ltd. , and a
new independent non-profit
organization called the Symbian
Foundation was established.
Symbian OS and its associated user
interfaces S60 , UIQ and MOAP(S)
were contributed by their owners
Nokia, NTT DoCoMo , Sony Ericsson
and Symbian Ltd. , to the foundation
with the objective of creating the
Symbian platform as a royalty-free,
open source software, under the
OSI - and FSF-approved Eclipse
Public License (EPL) . The platform
has been designated as the
successor to Symbian OS, following
the official launch of the Symbian
Foundation in April 2009. The
Symbian platform was officially
made available as open source
code in February 2010. [14]
Nokia became the major contributor
to Symbian's code, since it then
possessed the development
resources for both the Symbian OS
core and the user interface. Since
then Nokia has been maintaining its
own code repository for the platform
development, regularly releasing its
development to the public
repository. [15] Symbian was
intended to be developed by a
community led by the Symbian
Foundation , which was first
announced in June 2008 and which
officially launched in April 2009. Its
objective was to publish the source
code for the entire Symbian
platform under the OSI - and FSF-
approved Eclipse Public License
(EPL) . The code was published
under EPL on 4 February 2010;
Symbian Foundation reported this
event to be the largest codebase
moved to Open Source in history.
[16][14]
However, some important
components within Symbian OS
were licensed from third parties,
which prevented the foundation from
publishing the full source under EPL
immediately; instead much of the
source was published under a more
restrictive Symbian Foundation
License (SFL) and access to the full
source code was limited to member
companies only, although
membership was open to any
organisation. [17]
In November 2010, the Symbian
Foundation announced that due to
changes in global economic and
market conditions (and also a lack
of support from members such as
Samsung [18] and Sony Ericsson ), it
would transition to a licensing-only
organisation; [19] Nokia announced
it would take over the stewardship
of the Symbian platform. Symbian
Foundation will remain the
trademark holder and licensing
entity and will only have non-
executive directors involved.
On 11 February 2011, Nokia
announced a partnership with
Microsoft that would see it adopt
Windows Phone as its primary
smartphone platform, [20] and
Symbian will be its franchise
platform (dropping Symbian as its
main smartphone OS of choice). [11]
As a consequence, the use of the
Symbian platform for building
mobile applications dropped
rapidly. Research in June 2011
indicated that over 39% of mobile
developers using Symbian at the
time of publication were planning to
abandon the platform.[21]
By 5 April 2011, Nokia ceased to
openly source any portion of the
Symbian software and reduced its
collaboration to a small group of
pre-selected partners in Japan. [5]
Source code released under the EPL
remains available in third party
repositories. [22][23]
On 22 June 2011, Nokia made an
agreement with Accenture for an
outsourcing program. Accenture will
provide Symbian-based software
development and support services
to Nokia through 2016; about 2,800
Nokia employees became Accenture
employees as of October 2011. [12]
The transfer was completed on 30
September 2011. [6]
On 1 January 2014, with Nokia
shifting their developer support
away from Symbian, developers
will not be able to publish new
Symbian applications or content
into the Nokia Store. However,
existing Nokia Store content can
still be downloaded.
