Nokia buys Symbian

One of the highlights of the last week was that of Nokia buying Symbian for 210 M Pounds. Symbian has a rev of around 150M Pounds and hence the valuation is not even 2 times the rev of Symbian ..

Nokia intends to make Symbian opensource. Key thing to be seen would be on how many manufacturers will go that way ..The competitors to this would be LiMo, which has been leading the opensource mobile OS movement so far ..

Android, iPhone are slightly different from what I understand. They consist of hardware, sofware partners apart from the OS itself ..While Android OS may be opensource, iPhone OS is not opensource ..Both of these can be considered as EcoSystem ..They certainly will have an impact on how applications are developed, deployed and how money is made ..

As we see the events, the mobile industry is going the similar way of the pure software industry ..Earlier software license used to be a significant cost, then it was reduced, then reduced even further..later it was made free ..then came SaaS concept ..Service costs started becoming important ...

If we draw same paradox to the mobile devices, we may have a free devices in the years to come ..and companies will make money through the services..

This is also similar to the newspaper industry ..We pay Rs 1.5 or slightly more for a newspaper, whose paper only costs will be more than that ..Companies make money through advertismensts and same relief is extended to the user through a *almost* free newspaper ...