Nokia Releases Symbian Platform’s Source Code

Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia has made the source code for the Symbian platform available for download for the company's platform development partners.

The process of making the Symbian platform open source has been finally completed, during which the code delivery from the Symbian Foundation has been replaced with open and direct model from Nokia.

Although it would move to Windows Phone as its primary mobile operating system, Nokia still has plans of for the Symbian platform.

“As Nokia announced in February, our plan is for Windows Phone to be our primary smartphone strategy,” Petra Söderling, Head of Open Source, Symbian Smartphones, Nokia, notes in a recent post on the company's blog.

“While Nokia and Microsoft are working on a definitive agreement between the two companies and we have begun working on product collaboration, Nokia plans to ship at least 150 million Symbian smartphones and to continue deliver innovation and software updates to the platform.”

Petra Söderling also noted that the company would work closely with its platform development partners to achieve its plans.

“Through these pages you will find source code, platform development tools, documents and other support materials. The Symbian platform source is a snapshot of Nokia’s most recent master code base,” the blog post continues.

Several months ago, the company announced that it would offer a continuous evolution of the platform to partners and customers, and that it would no longer refer to various versions of the OS as Symbian^3 or Symbian^4.

Thus, the company would deliver a SDK through Forum Nokia, along with build tools that are available on its website, here.

“We have been working hard to turn most Symbian Foundation era materials into the new framework – for example, checking ownerships and use of rights for masses of documents – and are proud to announce that almost all of the source code is now uploaded to collab.symbian.nokia.com,” Söderling continues.

All of the remaining source files, tools and documents should become available in a matter of weeks.