Symbian: Beyond Smartphones

In the face of competition from the likes of Apple, Symbian hopes to run its mobile operating systems on netbooks, e-readers, GPS, and other mobile devices

By Olga Kharif

It's soul-searching time at Symbian. The smartphone operating system lost 15 percentage points of market share last year to competitors including Apple (AAPL) and Research In Motion (RIMM). Another cell-phone maker, Motorola (MOT), backed off from supporting Symbian software.

So Symbian, newly rebranded as the Symbian Foundation, is plotting a comeback. While Symbian still has the largest market share for smartphones, the operating system may soon be running on a wide range of other electronic devices, including netbooks, global positioning systems, e-readers, and Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), handheld gadgets just larger than smartphones. "There's a lot of interest in netbooks," David Wood, a strategist for Symbian Foundation, tells BusinessWeek.com. "I've never been as busy and rushed off my feet in my entire life. We are seeing a lot of early experimentation." Cell-phone maker Nokia (NOK) acquired all rights to Symbian last year.

Appealing to Computer Makers

Wood is quick to caution that it's still not clear how soon Symbian will make its break into new machines and which ones will carry the operating system. But if successful, the strategic shift would pit Symbian in new ways against software vendors as varied as Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG)-backed Android, and the open-source Linux Foundation. It would also bring Symbian into the orbit of additional electronics manufacturers other than Nokia (NOK), which today accounts for more than 90% of shipments of Symbian-based devices, according to analysts.

Symbian is embarking on a series of moves aimed at making itself more appealing to computer makers. For starters, it is tweaking the software to run more easily and cheaply on larger devices. "The goal is to open Symbian up to more manufacturers, because relying on just one vendor has only gotten them so far," says Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst at IDC.

New releases of the software, expected in the next year or so, will automatically adjust applications and images for larger screens—rather than just stretching them to fit a space, which can cause distortions, Wood says.

Symbian engineers are also ensuring the software is compatible with a wider range of chips. A team from Nokia has managed to make the software work on Intel's (INTC) Atom chip, which powers most netbooks, Symbian Executive Director Lee Williams announced in an Apr. 16 blog. Already used in netbooks, Atom is expected to be used eventually in MIDs, smartphones, and other mobile gadgets.

Currently, Symbian runs only on chips designed for cell phones and made mainly by Qualcomm (QCOM) and Texas Instruments (TXN). Such chips can also be used in netbooks, but Symbian needs to work on Intel's processors if its backers want to tackle a bigger portion of the growing market for small computers.

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