Checking out Symbian^4: Nokia's response to the iPhone
During last week's Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain, I had a very interesting discussion with the folks at the Symbian Foundation. Long story short, I got a very brief look at what appears to be Nokia's answer to the iPhone.
Context & Ripple Effects
The arc here starts in August 2007, when Engadget first framed Nokia as quietly building its own answer to the iPhone. What followed was two-plus years of groundwork: a video demo of the reworked S^4 interface in early December 2009, then a January 2010 announcement detailing the 2010 Symbian UI update built on the Qt framework.
At Mobile World Congress this week, the Symbian Foundation gave FierceWireless a brief hands-on look at Symbian^4, making the response tangible rather than theoretical. It lands mid-fight: Nokia has spent the past three months suing Apple over GSM patents, seeking an ITC import ban on the iPhone, iPod, and MacBook, and running a broader six-week patent campaign that also named Samsung and LG.
First-order effects
- The Symbian Foundation now has a concrete, demonstrable UI direction for Symbian^4 to show carriers and developers at MWC, replacing the abstract December 2009 video demo with a working preview.
- For Nokia, Symbian^4's Qt foundation is the direct competitive move against the iPhone's touch-first experience — the software layer where Apple had set the benchmark since 2007.
Second-order effects
- Qt lowers the barrier for developers outside Nokia's traditional base to target Symbian, putting pressure on the app-supply gap between Symbian handsets and Apple's App Store ecosystem.
- Apple faces Nokia on two fronts simultaneously — product and patent — and the ITC import-ban request gives Nokia leverage that could shape any settlement terms around the very devices Symbian^4 competes with.
Third-order effects
- If Symbian^4 ships close to what was demonstrated, smartphone competition consolidates into a software-platform contest judged on UI and developer reach rather than hardware specs — the structure the 2007 'Nokia's iPhone' framing anticipated.
- The open-source Symbian Foundation model positions carrier- and manufacturer-backed platforms as the industry's structural alternative to single-company closed stacks like Apple's, an outcome the Samsung/LG patent campaign implicitly defends.
The trend: Smartphone rivalry is shifting from hardware roadmaps to software platforms and ecosystems, with Nokia contesting the iPhone through both its Qt-based Symbian^4 roadmap and an escalating patent war.