SEE Symbian Exposition -The last or first? October 3rd

By Magnus Ingelsten
Being at the Symbian show 2009 was a frustrating experience. How come? Well, being a believer in Symbian with its maturity, wealth of applications, great and proven business features, and, although Symbian having gone through a challenging time, (Not only adapted to a whole new business model, but also went through the mother of all business transformations with a new ownership and new organization) still retaining a large developer community and eco system.
We also continue to see the most advanced handsets being launched on the Symbian OS. But at the same time we have seen the show being slashed to less than half its size compared to its peak 2007, which has had an impact on the excitement level generated by the show and the overall impact it makes on someone attending.
While the number of licensees are now down to "a few", listening to one of the main stage discussions on the future of Symbian, much praise was given by SEMC, Fujitsu, Nokia and DoCoMo on the future potential for Symbian as the OSS of choice.
However, the spirit amongst the attendees was great at this years SEE, the hopes were high, and the determination was there. The right subjects were brought up, but was the main question really answered: How can Symbian attract more licensees and retain it´s leadership position for multimedia devices?
-The challenge is of course to convert the eco system. To make everybody partly changing their businessmodel and become comfortable with contributing assets to the foundation. And to be fair this is not just a question that Symbian needs to answer but many other OSS platforms as well.
Next year SEE moves to Berlin in the middle of November and being "replaced" by the OSIM that moves to London at the end of October.

So will OSIM be a replacement, and will the SEE be a developers event for the die hard fans only? Will OSIM cover all aspects of opens source objectively or will there be a need for the specialized platforms event on Symbian in this scale? We are many considering this thought right now. See you next year in London and/or Berlin…