21 November 2008

How Do You Really Feel?
Nokia, Symbian, Google & Microsoft All Get Dissed

The Open Mobile Summit is a groundbreaking conference exploring the move to open up the mobile value chain, and deliver the mobile Internet.

It features industry heavyweight speakers from both the wireless establishment - mobile operators, handset manufacturers and software giants - as well as Internet, WiMAX, VoIP and mobile web players.

In a break from traditional conference etiquette, executives from the Google, Symbian and Nokia, faced off at the Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco, and let it be known exactly how they feel about each other. They even picked on Microsoft, despite the fact that they weren’t there to defend themselves.

All of this happened to the delight of the audience, who did all they could to encourage the behaviour by whistling and applauding with each stab that was made. The comments ranged from discreet to blunt, but clearly emphasize how competitive this market is getting.

The main participants were: Google’s group mobile manager Rich Miner, Symbian’s VP Jerry Panagrossi, and even a little bit came from Nokia’s EVP of corporate development office Mary McDowell. The crescendo came near the end with Symbian’s Panagrossi and Google’s Miner participating in a panel with executives from Intel, WindRiver and Access caught in the cross-fire.

-- Privacy on Google’s Android vs. Symbian’s OS: Miner took an early a shot at Symbian, saying that it has security issues because once an application is installed on a handset, it has access to the phone’s entire file system, whereas on Android the environment is more segmented and an application has limited access.

Panagrossi took offense at what he called “the attack” and fired back by saying that wasn’t true. He said Symbian is even more effective at managing privacy. Not only are there file-level security measures in place, Symbian also provides APIs to operators so that they can control what the app has access to, which can often be critical if the operator is in a country with strict laws. Panel participant Access VP Larry Berkin stepped in to moderate by saying that Panagrossi was correct.