The two biggest rivals in open source mobile platforms may be teaming up?
Reports coming out from Silcon Alley Insider are saying that Nokia may be looking to partner with the Google Android platform. Alley Insider made lame assumptions on the matter saying that Android would be implemented into Symbian (Nokia's Mobile software) or vice versa which just isn't going to happening. Here are two companies both fighting to win developers to their platform and then suddenly they make peace and join forces.
In my opinion, it doesn't seem logical for Nokia to buy out the other half of Symbian to take control of a company they are just going to implement into Google's Android Platform, however reports are coming out that developers are becoming increasingly unhappy with Android citing lack of transperancy in the SDK, some have even filed petition against Google because of it. I don't see that Google would simply partner up with Nokia to get rid of the bad press, if anything the press that would occur from this event would be far worse for Google.
Nokia aren't exactly have the best time either with their recently acquired platform called Symbian, some suggest that the process of migrating the software and assests over into Symbian which would make me wonder if these rumours are true then why did Nokia bother doing this, it's a pretty desperate move just because they won't have a complete Nokia owned system until years to come.
If other rumours are to believed Facebook may be making its way onto the Symbian platform which will prove divends for Nokia who will be trying to compete against Google's Opensocial which is indefinetly going to be a big part of the Android platform, some say it would be a simply implementation to the Symbian platform but I very much doubt it.
If we look at ways a Nokia/Google partnership could work out, there could be factors such as:
Greater developer community- Not only will there be a larger developer community, it will be a more focussed one because of the fact there will only be one standard to support
Greater Mobile devices support- The Symbian Foundation itself is home to 11 different phone makers these are: Samsung Electronics, Motorola, LG, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, AT&T, NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone.
If Nokia and Google create a standard that both can work with, then there will be possibility for Google to tap into the other phone makers markets, of course Google has already been demoe'd on a HTC
But the one point I would conclude with is that these systems are two very different, yet equally as interesting platforms which need to stay apart from each other to create a more varied playing field.
