Wednesday October 21, 04:16 PM
Symbian opens microkernel software to developers
HELSINKI, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Symbian Foundation said on Wednesday it had made microkernel, a key part of the world's most popular cellphone operating system, available under open source to developers nine months ahead of schedule.
With the focus in the maturing cellphone market shifting from hardware to software, the competition among operating systems has become increasingly intense.
Britain's Symbian has lost market share in recent years to new entrants such as Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL - news) and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG - news) , and is in a hurry to open the software for developers to attract a wider range of companies and more interesting applications.
Nokia (Stockholm: NOKI-SEK.ST - news) bought out other shareholders in Symbian last year, and gave the software this year to the not-for-profit Symbian Foundation, which is opening it by mid-2010 for use under open source basis, meaning all members can freely use and adapt the code.
Accenture (NYSE: ACN - news) , ARM, Nokia and Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN - news) contributed software to microkernel, Symbian said.
(Reporting by Tarmo Virki, editing by Will Waterman) Keywords: SYMBIAN/
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