The Symbian Foundation’s boss has said it’s only a matter of time before a Symbian tablet makes it to market. Should the iPad be scared?

The Symbian Foundation, the organisation behind the Symbian mobile operating system, made the code behind Symbian open source this week, and chief executive Lee Williams has made some bold predictions about what opening up will lead to.

In an interview with ZDNet, he said that the ability for Symbian to run on x86 architecture (That used by Intel based PCs) means that “it’s very likely that, in the next year or two, you would see [a Symbian tablet or netbook] hit the marketplace”.


Nokia reveals secret Symbian multitouch tablet concept


Williams did admit that so far the interest from manufacturers for using Symbian on non-mobile devices was only “occasional” so far, but it’s clear the Foundation is hoping someone will help shoehorn Symbian into the tablet trend the likes of the Apple, MSI and Asus are trying to kickstart this year.

Still, with a radical graphical overhaul on the way for Symbian, perhaps a Symbian tablet has some potential. Nokia, if you’re reading this, we’d still love to see that multitouch tablet concept running it.

Out TBC | £TBC | Symbian Foundation (Via ZDNet)

  • http://www.whatmobile.net Jonathan Morris

    Nokia is going to release a netbook later this year, running Maemo, and much as I’m sure Symbian would like to see its OS used on a tablet – I think Nokia will opt to use Maemo for that too if they decide to build one.

    • http://www.gravatar.com James Holland

      A Maemo tablet would be awesome, but still a bit fiddly in places though – The N900 I used for a few weeks struggled with small icons, and tapping into the corner of the screen – I’m sure that’s more hardware than software, but sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t – something non-tech heads won’t tolerate at all.

  • Carl Mumford

    Symbian running on a tablet? I’m not being too optimistic about it yet when you compare it to their mobile OS. I know their style is changing and Symbian will be turning over a new leaf but I don’t think we will sing and dance to hearing about it until we see it.

    The iPad OS is a proven OS in the iPhone and therefore that’s why we can see it working. I don’t think Apple have dissapointed yet so therefore that’s why when you compare the Symbian tablets which are not yet on the table, you know they will probably fail before they even begin.

Hot chat, right here!


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