Symbian Foundation Expands Operations in Japan

The Symbian Foundation, a non-profit organization that develops and licenses the Open Source Symbian (News - Alert) operating system, announced that it has opened a new office in Japan. This new base will facilitate the organization to further promote the adoption of its Symbian platform in Japan.

Symbian is an open mobile operating system ideal for data enabled mobile phones. The Symbian platform is based on Symbian OS and integrated with software assets that are contributed by Nokia, NTT (News - Alert) DOCOMO, and Sony Ericsson, including the S60 and MOAP user interfaces. Till date, the Symbian OS has been shipped in over 250 million mobile devices, according to Symbian.

Portions of the source code of the Symbian platform have been moved to open source and by mid-2010 the process will be complete, Symbian said.

The main focus of Symbian Foundation in Japan will be to support and collaborate with Japanese companies that are currently developing devices and software that are based on the Symbian platform. The new office will also provide support for Japanese members and developers through seminars on the latest technical developments. This will not only augment the developer community, but will also create opportunities for developer discussion and thereby energize the developer community.

The foundation manages and publishes key information regarding the Symbian platform. It will encourage the Japanese community to participate in discussion and collaboration, via websites, forums, wikis, blogs, and other channels. All these initiatives will help romote the adoption of the Symbian platform to a wider Japanese audience.

Toshio Miki (News - Alert), associate senior vice president and managing director of the communication device development department, for NTT DOCOMO, INC., said that Symbian Foundation should have significance on Japanese market in order to emerge attractive mobile devices and services based on Symbian Foundation platform. NTT DOCOMO is keen to make contributions to the foundation platform, as well as continue to promote the Symbian Foundation platform together with the Symbian Foundation, Japan.

"Sharp (News - Alert) believes that the Symbian Foundation will greatly contribute to the development of the telecom industry as a direct result of the move to open source," said Shinsuke Yamamoto, vice president and division general manager, personal communication systems division, communication systems group, Sharp Corp., said in a statement. "We also welcome the launch of the Japan office as this will allow us to work much closer together to meet and exceed the high expectations of our customers.”

“The establishment of the Japan office, in addition to the existing offices in London, San Francisco and Helsinki, shows that Japan has been identified as a very important market for the Symbian Foundation,” Nobuo Ohtani, president of the mobile phones unit at Fujitsu (News - Alert) Limited, said in a statement. “We expect that the Japan office will become a catalyst for both information and new business opportunities and that it will enable the domestic ecosystems to be developed and world leading Japanese technology can be brought to the global marketplace. As a handset vendor, we will support the Symbian Foundation and promote to create the products based on the Symbian Foundation platform."