Nokia adds a partner in its quest for mobile phone interoperability in Siemens, and at the same time scores a new win for its Series 60 platform.
Nokia and Siemens Information and Communication Mobile (Siemens IC Mobile) today held a press conference where the two companies announced they would be collaborating to create and drive the implementation of software for mobile terminals based on open standards. A clear focus of the agreement is that both companies want to achieve maximum interoperability between mobile devices and applications, which operators, developers, corporations and consumers have wanted for a long time. These functionalities and features will then be promoted by both companies for adoption throughout the industry.
As a first step, Nokia and Siemens will combine their efforts in mobile
terminal software applications by providing common tools and by effectively creating a larger market for developers - mainly achieved through Siemens licensing Nokia's Series 60 software platform and continuing development of that platform together with Nokia.
Both parties stated their commitment to developing and implementing common software functions and features for mobile devices and intend to increase and serve the developer community for mobile terminal software applications from both of their web sites.
"Interoperability is the key for the future," says Peter Zapf, President of
Mobile Phones within the Information and Communication Mobile Group. "In order to achieve consumer and operator acceptance, full interoperability between different devices, applications, services and networks has to be achieved. Siemens and Nokia will together drive the future of mobile communication and we invite other players in the market to join us."
"This announcement is significant for the entire mobile industry, as our collaboration with Siemens will create the first real manifestation of a vision for handset-vendor-independent and interoperable solutions based on
open industry standards. This initiative will benefit developers and
operators not only because of the common software design, but also through the combined ability that Nokia and Siemens will be able to provide in distributing the applications and tools," says Pertti Korhonen, Senior Vice President, Mobile Software, Nokia.
Both companies will also continue to support and contribute to the work on key open standards and technologies in respective standardization and industry forums and aim to identify new areas in which they can implement and promote open standards.
Together with Nokia, Siemens will implement the Series 60 software platform in Symbian OS-based smart phones. Programming interfaces, that are necessary to develop applications and related tools, will be available to software developers worldwide on both companies' websites. As the programming interfaces will be the same, developers will most likely enjoy significant benefits through easy access to both the Nokia and Siemens product platforms.
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