Symbian Ltd.
The Symbian Limited was a British software company headquartered in London, which continues to exist as a foundation under the name Symbian Foundation since 2008.
The Symbian Ltd.. [ Sɪmbɪən ] was founded in June 1998 as a consortium of Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Psion. In the following years, Panasonic, Siemens, Sony Ericsson and Samsung joined as partner. In December 2008, Nokia acquired all the shares in Symbian. Already in June 2008, Nokia had announced that they would then leave Symbian to a newly established Symbian Foundation.
Symbian OS
→ Main article: Symbian platform
The company develops and distributes the Symbian OS, which is based on EPOC and runs smartphones from the manufacturer and licensee BenQ, Ericsson, Fujitsu, LG, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Sendo, Sharp, Siemens and Sony Ericsson. By April 2006 no less than 100 different smartphone models have been delivered with Symbian OS to over 250 major carriers worldwide. Together 145 million Symbian smartphones have passed since the Ericsson R380 in 2000 have been delivered (as of Q2 2007).
On Symbian OS based different user interfaces, most devices come from Nokia and with the user interface S60 ( formerly Series 60) equipped. The most popular devices are currently in the Nokia Nseries ( N70 - N73, N76, N78, N79, N80 - N82, N90 - N93, N95, N96, N97 etc. ) and Eseries ( E50, E51, E60, E61 ( i), , etc. E65, E66, E70, E71, E90 Communicator ), but other manufacturers such as Samsung use S60 in some devices. It was also the Nokia Series 80 still in the Communicator series, and Series 90 ( in Nokia 7710 Widescreen Smartphone ) one - both have been replaced by S60 3rd Edition. Use Nokia and Samsung with S60 5th edition now available in some devices, a touch-screen version, which can be operated both with a stylus than with your fingers.
Another known UIQ user interface which is used by various manufacturers. Sony Ericsson UIQ uses in the P series (P800, P900, P1i, etc.), in the G series ( G700, G900 ) in the M- series ( M600i ) and in the W series ( W950, W960i ). Motorola comes after the series A900/A1000 with the RIZR Z8 based on UIQ 3.0 on the market.
Additionally, Symbian OS also comes in closed phones for the Japanese market for use ( FOMA phones ).
Since the acquisition of Symbian Ltd.. by components of Nokia Symbian under the Eclipse license ( open source ) are provided. This is to be achieved by the respective user interface in addition to the higher prevalence a certain independence of the software applications. The aim, above all, the establishment of a market power over Windows Mobile, Linux, mobile ( Android, LiMo, OpenMoko ), and iOS (iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad).
Software
For Symbian OS there are well over 8,000 applications (E -Books, Office, games, tools, dictionaries, etc.) of several thousand independent software developers (Independent Software Vendor ) worldwide.