Symbian’s CEO Nigel Clifford spelt out his vision for the organisation’s future under Nokia as one which would sweep away previous obstacles and attract innovative developers.
Giving the opening keynote speech at the Smartphone Show in London, Clifford admitted that up until now developers may have been put off working with Symbian because of licensing agreements and conditions.
He promised that would be among the “double quick” changes that would be made when the deal by Nokia to purchase Symbian goes through next year.
“We will take a popular operating system and user interfaces and create a new platform with a new identity,” he said.
This would solve the conundrum that, according to Clifford, people had been faced with: " We have so far lived in an either/or world where you can either have free code but with a small footprint – or you can have very capable, proven software but at a cost.
“With Symbian we are moving from that to both ‘and’ – proven in the market place and for free.”
Sporting a broken arm from a cycling accident, Clifford said the result of this would be that there would no longer need to be a trade-off in developers’ minds.
He said the cost and effort would be taken out of the development track and a unified asset created.
“We are sweeping the hurdles away so we can get on with the job at hand,” he said.
Earlier, David Wood, executive vice president of research at Symbian, also stressed where the organisation’s emphasis would lie once the deal with Nokia was completed.
“There are three words that are most important for the success of the Symbian platform going forward: developers, developers and developers,” he said.
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