Word: symbian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...joint venture, called Symbian, will license Psion's software as the underlying brains behind a new generation of smart devices, ranging from mobile phones that receive e-mail, surf the Internet and even pay for transactions, to laptop computers that can go online automatically without anyone's having to open the carrying case. Yet the battle between Symbian and the Microsoft camp is not just about who will make next year's cool gadgets. It promises to determine who will control the next era of personal communications...
...sales. "I foresee an absolutely huge future for the pretty amazing new stuff that's going to be added to the mobile phone," says Martin Heath, a telecommunications specialist for consultants KPMG in London. "There will be tremendous battles for who controls the value of this chain. Symbian has the advantage, but it's 10 yds. in a marathon, not 10 yards in the 100-yd. dash...
That led Potter to approach Nokia, Ericsson and later Motorola--which has agreed in principle to join Symbian--with an offer to use Psion's operating system EPOC as the basis for smart phones. He offered a remarkable deal, taking only 31% of Symbian and selling the remainder to the three phone giants for $50 million. "Companies like Nokia and Ericsson are concerned about ending up like the manufacturers of personal computers, becoming box shifters for Microsoft," says Martin Butler, a British computer consultant. "Potter could become the Bill Gates of the portable-device marketplace. It's there waiting...