Although a few months old, it was interesting to listen to a podcast on the Nokia’s purchase of all non-Nokia shares in Symbian. The move pushed the work and products of Symbian into the open source world. Now, any developer can contribute. This strategic move made finaical sense too – rather than paying Symbian around 250 million dollars a year in licsensing fees. Before the purchase, Nokia owned 48 perecent of total shares. But this move has not only benifited Nokia – it has also increased pressure on other smart phone developers – Microsoft – to either reduce their licensisnng fees or go completely open, as has Google w/ Android. The bottom line will see phone prices to be reduced and an increase in various types of services.

With new competition with Google Chrome, the push towards cloud computing, the purchase of Symbian, and a long laundry list of other threats, its seems Microsoft is missing the train – soon to be out of many equations of daily users of mobile, internet, and desktop applications.