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I’ve been waiting for some kind of response from the big manufacturers to the iPhone.  Sure they’ve thrown some clones our way but nothing that puts them on the path to a true “iPhone killer”.  Today, they’ve shown they mean business by uniting the Symbian OS. 

Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and NTT DoCoMo have all joined forces to open up Symbian and work to encourage developers on the common platform.  By bringing together Symbian OS, S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) they will create one open mobile platform.  And they are working with carriers and other telecom giants like AT&T, LG, Samsung, STMicro, Texas Instruments and Vodafone to widen the net of users and developers.

This is a relatively big deal.  To me, it says, “we get the idea that software is king.”  To the world, it says,  “this is how we move forward.”  And a lot of weight moving forward it is.  Going open source and royalty free they hope to attract all the developers who have iPhones royalties in their eyes right now.

This is definitely a step in the right direction.  As my Econ professors used to say, “competition is a good thing.”

Read [Sony Ericsson]