AT&T Inc. (T) is taking the bold step of attempting —maybe — and tentatively — to reduce the number of handset OS its devices run on, even going so far as to embrace an open source approach for its branded feature phones based on Symbian.
That’s the word from the Symbian Partner Event, where Roger Smith, director of next-generation services at AT&T, said there would be "dramatic consolidation from AT&T in terms of the mobile platforms and tool chains that we support."
It’s a bold step. Device OS fragmentation in the wireless world is somewhat of a hallmark, kind of like bureaucracy in the federal government. You’ve got your BlackBerry, your Palm, your iPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile (various versions) and countless flavors of Linux derivatives, including Google’s Android. It’s all a hangover from the development of closed ecosystems to protect competitive advantage.
But in the age of application development and third-party content, all that red tape makes it hard to federate content across disparate mobile OS, makes it difficult for developers since they have to write a new version of the same application for each iteration of operating system, gets in the way of interoperability and makes for security and management headaches for corporate IT departments.
No one expects BlackBerry or Apple to throw open its source code to mesh with Linux APIs anytime soon, and Smith reportedly did not offer any concrete details for AT&T’s OS consolidation. But AT&T is considering making the new open-source Symbian platform from Nokia the standard for its lower-cost models, he said.
