Symbian Foundation bulks out board

Fujitsu signs up, Qualcomm joins by proxy

Posted in Mobile, 29th October 2009 15:41 GMT

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Fujitsu has signed up to the Symbian Foundation, while Qualcomm's new open source lab has also got itself a boardroom seat.

Fujitsu has been making Symbian handsets for the last eight years, for the Japanese market within which 40 million Symbian-based handsets have shipped. Qualcomm is new to Symbian, but its Qualcomm Innovation Center (QuIC) is devoted to getting open source software working with Qualcomm chips, so membership of such a large open source project makes sense.

Both companies will apparently be bringing "a wealth of knowledge and expertise in open source" and are both committed, financially as well as ideologically, to the Symbian Foundation.

Fujitsu was part of the consortium that developed MOAP(S), the GUI layer used on Japanese handsets running Symbian, which was contributed to the Foundation at its formation. So Fujitsu's commitment is unsurprising, but still good news for the Foundation.

QuIC just want to see Qualcomm chips used everywhere, and holding a board position should make sure that the parent's hardware remains compatible with future versions of Symbian. Still, the company will be careful to remain neutral in any debate on the best mobile telephony platform even as its parent continues to promote BREW. ®

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