Endorsement for Symbian Foundation grows; not quite from SMS Text News yet

You know this whole Symbian Foundation thing? (i.e. recently Nokia actually bought Symbian and stuck it into the ‘Symbian Foundation) Well, I’m not sold on it. Not yet.

I just got a news release in from Nokia telling me that endorsement for the foundation grows, thus:

The initial board members of the Symbian Foundation have welcomed continuing support from mobile industry leaders for their plans for the Symbian Foundation and the evolution of Symbian OS(TM) as the leading, open platform for mobile innovation.

Here’s a bit of background:

Plans for the Symbian Foundation were announced on June 24, 2008 by the initial board members; AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nokia (NYSE: NOK), NTT DOCOMO, Samsung Electronics, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone, together with Symbian Limited. An additional 11 organizations supported the announcement on that day; today 9 further companies are confirming their endorsement of plans for the Symbian Foundation, including mobile operators 3, America Movil and TIM, semiconductor manufacturer Marvell plus services and software providers Aplix, EB, EMCC Software, Sasken and TietoEnator.

My problem is that all those companies listed above (a few exceptions) have continually proved themselves unable to manage innovation properly.

“Coming together” to form a foundation isn’t going to fix things. Developers need Windows. They need the equivalent of Windows or Apple. It needs to be piece-of-piss simple to get your applications out to the normobs, because they’ve got the cash. It’s a total unmitigated nightmare. Shit UIs. Shit industry price plans and business models that work for nobody except the companies above. Stifled innovation.

Here’s a chap from Nokia who’s quite happy:

“We were delighted with the broad support for plans for the Symbian Foundation,” said Kai Oistamo, Executive Vice President, Devices at Nokia, on behalf of the initial board members. “We believe that this is a significant move for our industry and are pleased that these additional market leaders agree and are giving their support to the initiative.”

Yada yada yada. This should have been done years ago. YEARS ago.

Can we get a decent standard that makes it simple for entrepreneurs to innovate, be successful and get rewards?

Maybe. Here’s hoping.