European analyst company ARCchart thinks Nokia may shift from the Symbian OS to Linux in the near future; a move that would have a seismic affect on the mobile device market, smartphones in particular.

ARChart sites Nokia's licensing of Microsoft's ActiveSync technology, even though Symbian platform developer Symbian Limited already made the same deal, as one reason why it came to its conclusion. Symbian's ActiveSync deal should make Nokia's similar agreement - on the face of it - unnecessary.

That is unless the mobile phone giant plans to use the technology for something other than a Symbian device.

A second example given by ARChart is, in fact, one of these devices. The mobile phone giant announced plans to release its first Linux device, the 770, back in May.

Unlike Nokia's Symbian handsets, however, the 770 isn't a smartphone and can only be used for connecting wirelessly (via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth) to the Internet.


770 Tablet

Nokia didn't say why it chose not to use the Symbian OS for the 770. At the time of the 770's announcement, the company's vice president of convergence products Janne Jormalainen told internetnews, "This is the first step in creating an open-source product for broadband and Internet services."

The company would launch regular software updates for the 770. "The next software release planned for the first half of next year will support more presence-based functionalities, such as VoIP and instant messaging," according to Jormalainen.

PalmSource announced a similar decision to use Linux as the underpinnings of the Palm OS going forward. The effect of a Nokia defection to Linux would have much bigger implications for the Symbian platform, of course, and the smartphone market in general than PalmSource’s move.

You see, unlike PalmSource Symbian is the licensor and not a licensee. For PalmSource, this means a positive reaction on the part of its manufacturer partners, at the very least, maintains the status quo for the Palm platform.

Nokia, on the other hand, accounts for 70 percent of the Symbian sales all by itself. Without Nokia, Symbian could in effect lose that much of its business.

A devastating blow to Symbian and its 61 percent share of what research firm Canalys defines as the smart device market (PDAs and smartphones combined). Without Nokia's 50 percent smart device market share, Symbian licensees drop to 11 percent of smart device shipments.

Still number one … barely.

The ARCHchart report puts it this way, "While Symbian boasts of having a total of nine OS licensees - BenQ, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Sendo, Siemens and Sony Ericsson – the truth is that, relative to Nokia, shipments of these licensees’ Symbian devices are miniscule and they all exhibit varying levels of commitment to the OS."

Not only is Nokia the largest conduit for the Symbian OS into the market, it also appears to be one of the few vendors capable of releasing Symbian products with any sort of regularity.

Owning full control over the platform it uses for its devices could be another reason for a possible Nokia defection to Linux. Nokia owns close to fifty percent of - and helped form -Symbian Limited.

When Nokia wanted to assume full control of the Symbian, other Symbian partners thwarted Nokia’s attempts. A move to Linux could mean the autonomy and independence Nokia appears to crave.

Should Nokia go the path of Linux and create its own mobile operating system, the savings in terms of licensing fees could be huge for the mobile phone vendor too.

The company already develops the user-interfaces (e.g. Series 60, Series 80, etc.) for its Symbian smartphones. Series 60 is the most popular smartphone platform in the world.

Perhaps Nokia’s goal is to take these interfaces and integrate them with Linux. That's pretty much what PalmSource is doing with the Linux platform it is developing.