Nokia announced it has partnered with Apple to use open source software to create a Web browser for smartphones using its Series 60 mobile phone software platform.

The Finnish telecom made the announcement this week at its Nokia Connection Conference 2005 in Helsinki.

"Nokia is excited to enrich Series 60 with optimized mobile Web browsing," Pertti Korhonen, CTO of Nokia, said at the conference, which was broadcast over the Internet.

Korhonen also said open source software was ideal for development since it will enable Nokia to leverage and contribute to speedy software innovation.

The browser will use the same open source components -- WebCore and JavaScriptCore -- that Apple uses in its popular Safari Internet browser, the company said.

Series 60 is expected to increase in value from manufacturers and operators to end-users, Korhonen said. It will also benefit from the flexible architecture, full Web compliance and a truly enjoyable user experience, he added.

Nokia says it plans to continue its collaboration with Apple and actively participate in the open source community to further develop and enhance these components, contributing to Nokia's expertise in mobility.

"Apple is pleased to assist Nokia in creating their new Series 60 browser based on the same KHTML open source technology that powers Apple's Safari," Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said in a statement. "The Safari Web Kit's blazing performance, efficient code base and support for open standards make it an ideal open source technology for projects like Nokia's new Series 60 browser."

Nokia says the browser will be available during the first half of 2006 and said it would continue to cooperate with Apple.

More Nokia News

At the same event, the company announced its Series 40 Platform for application development. Nokia says Series 40 will open up new opportunities for developers and operators to target a broader consumer marketplace.

Also introduced was a plan to increase the options businesses have to optimize their voice services. Nokia will work with Cisco, OnRelay and IBM to broaden its strategy to offer enterprise voice mobility options.

Jaakko Olkkonen, Nokia's general manager for enterprise voice solutions, said the strategy is a "fundamentally new way to marry the best of fixed and mobile telephony to provide cost savings and productivity to businesses and employees, new business opportunities for service providers, and simplicity and freedom for people in or out of the office."

On the same day Nokia executives convened in Helsinki, the company hosted the Annual Nokia Connection 2005 event in Singapore.

There they unveiled three new CDMA handsets. The Nokia 6265 camera phone includes a 2 mega-pixel imaging sensor in a modern sliding design, according to the company. And in addition to its entry-level market line, the folding Nokia 2255 phone and Nokia 2125 offer 64K color displays and convenient integrated speakerphones.

The Nokia 2125 is expected to be available during the third quarter of 2005, while the Nokia 2255 and Nokia 6265 are expected to be available during the fourth quarter of 2005.

Market Position
Although many in the U.S. know Nokia as the number one mobile phone operator in the world, few understand that the company is by far the top-selling smartphone vendor. Its smartphones are so popular, in fact, they equaled all other manufacturer's smartphone and PDA sales during the first quarter of this year ... combined.

So, according to research firm Canalys, Nokia accounted for 50 percent of all PDA/smartphone (smart mobile device) sales and 80 percent of all Symbian smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2005. That's compared to .4 percent for number two palmOne, 7 percent for RIM, 6.1 percent for Fujitsu (another Symbian licensee), and 5.6 percent for HP.

In spite of its huge lead, many pundits predict the smartphone side of the smart mobile device equation will eventually tighten up, becoming a two-way race between Symbian with its eponymous platform and Microsoft with Windows Mobile. Should that come to pass, it would most likely have detrimental effect on Nokia’s market position.

At over 14 million handsets shipped last year and an estimated 25 million phones in circulation, Symbian has done remarkably well in the nascent smartphone market so far. Number two Microsoft, on the other hand, has struggled to get handset manufacturers and carriers, in particular, to support its intelligent handset platform.

This spring, however, Gartner's Nick Jones and John Girard predicted in an article in the Inquirer that Microsoft and its licensees would not only tighten the race with Symbian, it should overtake the smartphone leader. The analysts asserted the initial reason would be Microsoft's new Windows Mobile 2005 operating system, as it fixes, according to them, all the bugs and performance issues in previous editions of the platform.

Should Symbian and Windows Mobile sales equalize, the analysts think the winner will then come down to marketing. As a result, they agree Microsoft should come out on top because it can do a better job of painting its products as ‘the’ choice for enterprises. Interestingly, the analysts didn't think upstarts RIM or the J2ME platform (let alone the Palm platform) would end up being major factors in the end.

Today, smartphones account for a very tiny percentage of the world's 1.2 billion mobile phones. JupiterResearch predicted a couple of months ago, however, that smartphone shipments will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 28 percent through 2009, rising to 9.3 percent of the total market by the end of the decade; a significant chunk of a market expected to top 600 million units shipped a year by that time.

Friendly Foes
The rival smartphone platform providers declared a truce of sorts in March with news that Symbian would license Microsoft's Exchange Server ActiveSync protocol for its mobile OS. As a result, Symbian said it would develop an Exchange Server ActiveSync protocol – plug-in – for the Symbian OS messaging architecture to enable licensees to include direct over-the-air (OTA) synchronization capabilities for Exchange Server 2003 e-mail, calendar, contacts, and data to their handsets.

The agreement raised eyebrows because Microsoft and Symbian have fiercely competed against one another through the years. In fact, several cell phone manufacturers formed Symbian to help counter the software giant's expected assault on their turf.

Symbian wasn't the first to partner with Microsoft on Exchange Server compatibility. PalmOne licensed the ActiveSync protocol for its Treo smartphones, and even Nokia did the same for its future handsets. Due to its Microsoft deal, Nokia can now build a direct OTA synchronization links between its handsets running the mobile phone company’s Symbian-based Series 60 and Series 80 interfaces on the Symbian platform and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003.