We’re very pleased to welcome our latest members to the Symbian Foundation. They are a microcosm of Symbian as a whole: a Java developer, a WiFi technology provider, a Mobile Software Management provider, an Internet service portal and an applications and services provider, they are based in Japan, the US, Israel, China and Portugal.
As of today, the Symbian Foundation has 114 members, 54 companies in the application process, and four affiliate members. Affiliate members are subsidiaries of members that have asked to have visibility on the Symbian Web sites in their own right.
Here is a description of each of our new members, in their own words:
“Aplix Corporation is the global leader in deploying Java technology in mobile phones and other consumer electronics devices. The company was founded in 1986 and has been a Sun Java licensee since 1996. Aplix has been publicly listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (Mothers) since 2003.”
“Boingo Wireless delivers on the promise of global Wi-Fi roaming – without the roaming fees. Use one account at more than 100,000+ hotspots around the world. Stay connected at more than 500+ airports, 20,000+ hotels, and 25,000+ cafes and restaurants around the world. Boingo Mobile gives you unlimited access to the public Internet in commercial hot spots around the globe with your Wi-Fi enabled mobile device.”
“Red Bend Software, the leader in Mobile Software Management (MSM), provides software solutions for managing firmware, applications and devices over the air. The company’s award-winning MSM products enable device manufacturers, mobile operators and software developers to increase revenues, reduce support costs and achieve faster time to market by remotely managing their software assets on mobile devices. Red Bend’s software has been deployed in more than 520 million mobile devices by seven of the top 10 handset manufacturers, including Kyocera, LG Electronics, Motorola, Sharp, Sony Ericsson and ZTE, as well as dozens of other leading companies in the mobile, M2M and WiMAX markets.”
“Founded in November, 1998, Tencent, Inc. has grown into China’s largest and most used Internet service portal. In its ten-year history, Tencent has been able to maintain steady and fast-paced growth by always putting its users first. On June 16th, 2004, Tencent Holdings Limited (SEHK 700) went public on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.”
“WIT Software is a software company that creates applications and services for telecommunication and media companies. WIT provides technical consulting and software development for any company that wants to exploit the power of Mobile and Fixed Communications.
WIT Software was founded in March 2001 as a spin-off company from the University of Coimbra, Portugal. Most of the people that now make part of the company have been working in software for the telecommunications industry since 1997.”
We’re looking forward to the contributions all will bring to the community.
Don’t forget to follow our daily membership updates on Twitter!
July 26, 2009 at 8:15 pm |
Well done for getting Red Bend – MSM is a very important and under appreciated link in the mobile chain.
However, while having all these corporate members in the Foundation is very nice what is happening on the other end with connections into the greater open source community? Is there a blog for how Symbian is interacting with that…?
July 27, 2009 at 11:12 am |
Hi, David
Thanks for the query, and for the suggestion. I’ve just trawled through the other blogs and found references to our interactions with the open source community, but you’re correct in that there isn’t one devoted to it.
You’re a member, therefore you own our interactions with the world as much as (possibly more than) the paid staff — do you want to start that blog?
Cheers,
Lauren
July 27, 2009 at 11:16 am |
> do you want to start that blog?
I don’t have access to the Foundation IT infrastructure so I wouldn’t know how.
If you can put me in touch with the person who runs the Symbian blog-space I’d be more than happy to discuss it with them.
July 27, 2009 at 11:20 am |
I’ll get working on that now!
July 27, 2009 at 11:50 am |
Hi David,
Several Symbian employees were at OSCON in California last week. I’m expecting to see a posting on blog.symbian.org covering this.
Not yet. Personally I’m unsure about fragmenting the Symbian blog space, and I expect that the big news about our interactions with the Open Source world will continue to be made on our main blog.
// David W.
July 27, 2009 at 12:04 pm |
@ David: am writing it right now. It was very busy at OSCON from tuesday to friday, so I never go round to completing the article.
I have already requested to create a blog collator for the community such as http://www.planeteclipse.org/planet/ or http://planet.apache.org/committers/. However, it is to early to launch it. Most package owners are in the process of finding their feet and are in the process of learning how to be good open source citicens. Many member companies are in the process of developing their open source strategies. Opening a community blog, early Q4 gives them some time. I will probably follow suity and create a contributor blog, as an intermediate step. Just had no time, due to OSCON.
July 28, 2009 at 1:09 pm |
Thanks Lars.
Really I’m talking about things like the following:
London Hackspace
Bar Camps
Local on-site user-groups
Summer of code
Open source awards
Open Source Jam
I know the Foundation is stretched very thin but it would be great if they (or via proxies) could get involved with things like those.
July 28, 2009 at 2:35 pm |
I think for most of these, the proxies are the right way to go, except we call them involved members. We need (and plan to) nurture and support members who will take on these areas.
The first program to be rolled out will probably be local user groups and local events.