Introduction to Symbian OS
Symbian OS is proven on several platforms. It started life as the operating system for the Psion series of consumer PDA products .The first dedicated mobile phone incorporating Symbian OS was the Ericsson R380Smartphone, which incorporated a flip-open keypad to reveal a touch screen display and several connected applications.
Introduction to Mobile OS
Small devices come in many shapes and sizes, each addressing distinct target markets that have different requirements. The market segment we are interested in is that of the mobile phone. The primary requirement of this market segment is that all products are great phones. This segment spans voice-centric phones with information capability to information-centric devices with voice capability. These advanced mobile phones integrate fully-featured personal digital assistant (PDA) capabilities with those of a traditional mobile phone in a single unit. There are seeral critical factors for the need of operating systems in this market. It is important to look at the mobile phone market in isolation. It has specific needs that make it unlike markets for PCs or fixed domestic appliances. Scaling down a PC operating system, or bolting communication capabilities onto a small and basic operating system, results in too many fundamental compromises. Symbian believes that the mobile phone market has five key characteristics that make it unique, and result in the need for a specifically
designed operating system:
- mobile phones are both small and mobile.
- mobile phones are ubiquitous - they target a mass-market of consumer,enterprise and professional users.
- mobile phones are occasionally connected - they can be used when connected to the wireless phone network, locally to other devices, or on their own.
- manufacturers need to differentiate their products in order to innovate and compete in a fast-evolving market.
The platform has to be open to enable independent technology and software vendors to develop third-party applications, technologies and services. The way to grow the mobile phone market is to create good products - and the only way to create good products is to address each of these characteristics and ensure that technology doesn’t limit functionality. Meeting the impressive growth forecast by analysts in a reasonable time frame is only possible with the right operating system. Symbian and its licensees aim to create a mass market for advanced open mobile phones. To deliver products that satisfy mobile phone users, an operating system must be engineered to take into account key functional demands of advanced communications on 2.5G and 3G networks.
To fit into the limited amount of memory a mobile phone may have, the operating system must be compact. However, it must still provide a rich set of functionality. What is needed to power a mobile phone is not a mini-operating system but a different operating system - one that is tailored. Symbian is dedicated to mobile phones and Symbian OS has been designed to meet the sophisticated requirements of
the mobile phone market that mini-operating systems can’t. They simply run out of steam The five key points - small mobile devices, mass-market, intermittent wireless connectivity, diversity of products and an open platform for independent software developers - are the premises on which Symbian OS was designed and developed. This makes it distinct from any desktop, workstation or server operating system. This also makes Symbian OS different from embedded operating systems, or any of its competitors, which weren’t designed with all these key points in mind. Symbian is committed to open standards. Symbian OS has a POSIX-compliant interface and a Sun-approved JVM, and the company is actively working with emerging standards, such as J2ME, Bluetooth, MMS, SyncML, IPv6 and WCDMA.
As well as its own developer support organization, books, papers and courses, Symbian delivers a global network of third-party competency and training centers - the Symbian Competence Centers and Symbian Training Centers. These are specifically directed at enabling other organizations and developers to take part in this new economy. Symbian has announced and implemented a strategy that will see Symbian OS running on many advanced open mobile phones. Products launched, such as the Sony Ericsson P800 smartphone, the Nokia 9200 Communicator series and the NTT DoCoMo Fujitsu 2102V [2], show the diversity of mobile phones that can be created with Symbian OS. Other Symbian OS licensees include BenQ Motorola, Panasonic, Samsung, Sendo and Siemens. Over the next year, we can look forward to an even wider range of mobile phones.
SYMBIAN HISTORY
Symbian OS started life as EPOC - the operating system used for many years in Psion handheld devices. When Symbian was formed in 1998, Psion contributed EPOC into the group. EPOC was renamed Symbian OS and has been progressively updated, incorporating both voice and data telephony technologies of ever greater sophistication with every product release.
THE COMPANY:
Headquartered in London, Symbian Ltd. is owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Panasonic, Psion, Siemens and Sony-Ericsson.
Symbian Customers:
Symbian’s customers include all of its shareholders, but any company is free to license the product - Symbian OS is open to all on equal terms. So far, in addition to the shareholders, Sony, Sanyo, Kenwood and Fujitsu have all taken licenses.
Symbian OS is a robust multi-tasking operating system, designed specifically for real-world wireless environments and the constraints of mobile phones (including limited amount of memory). Symbian OS is natively IP-based, with fully integrated communications and messaging. It supports all the leading industry standards that will be essential for this generation of data-enabled mobile phones. Symbian OS enables a large community of developers. The open platform allows the installation of third party software to further enhance the platform.
