Symbian netbook future is ‘superconverged’

Symbian has already demonstrated that it can port its OS to the Intel Atom processor and this could be a precursor to future Symbian-based netbooks. In an interview with Techradar, Tim Holbrow, who is the chief of the newly formed Symbian Foundation said: “it (Symbian) can already run on netbooks. Will we see them on the market? “I think so, yep.” Before adding cryptically, “but I think the question is, will netbooks carry on being netbooks?”

Holbrow also feels that netbooks could be threatened by the continuing convergence of mobile phones. “What we’re seeing at the Symbian Foundation is a move towards superconvergence… all of your technologies all converging into one device,” he said. “We can see a world in two or three years’ time where mobile devices start to eat into the world of laptops and netbooks… obviously cameras are already doing it.”

Personally I find it hard to believe that something like a phone and netbook will converge at any point. If mobile phones got any bigger than they are, than they would lose their portability. And if you keep the mobile phone size where it is today, then that would only offer a compromised ‘netbook’ experience.

Nokia’s next-gen tablet OS pictured; coming to netbooks?

Nokia has made a number of noises about entering the netbook segment at some point in the future. There have not been many rumours surrounding what this netbook may look like; all we’ve had are a few rumours on possible ODM partners used to manufacture the product. One of the key questions though, is which OS will Nokia decide to use?

Symbian may be a strong possibility, given Nokia’s association with the platform. However, another possibility could be a version of its upcoming tablet OS, especially since touchscreen netbooks are expected to become more prevalent as the year progresses. Read more

Symbian talks netbooks

While much of the talk surrounding Linux-based operating systems has been focused on Google Android, Symbian is looking to remind us that it could be a dark horse in the netbook OS wars. Both operating systems originated on smartphones and are now looking beyond handheld devices, to a raft of new consumer devices including netbooks.

Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation, was at the Nokia Developer Summit on Tuesday and gave his views on what a Symbian-based netbook should look like. It was his blog entry recently that brought to light the work Symbian engineers had done in porting the Symbian OS to Intel’s Atom CPU. Read more

Symbian S60 operating system ported to Intel’s Atom

There are a number of different operating systems that are vying for attention on netbooks. Apart from the upcoming Windows 7, there are a number of Linux variants such as Google’s Android. Now, Symbian is also showing its efforts in a proof of concept experiment where it has run Symbian S60 5th Edition on an off the shelf Intel Atom based system.

I imagine Symbian has done this to highlight the flexibility of the Symbian platform beyond the use of smartphones into other devices. The Symbian team hopes to generate some interest in such a platform in the form of an investor. Whilst the screen shots show that it is very rough around the edges, the team were pleased with the “responsiveness of the UI and upper application layers”. Read more