Symbian is an operating system for cell phones like Microsoft Windows is for computers. Symbian doesn't work on all cell phones, but it does work on, for example, the ones manufactured by Nokia. Some of the big cell phone manufacturers, amongst which Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola, have announced that they will start a Symbian Foundation. Its most important goal will be turning the Symbian OS into open source, which means that the source code, the big secret of Symbian if you will, becomes accessible to everyone.

Future Vision by Erwin Van Lun on this article

The great thing about this development is that soon not only a few thousand people on the Symbian head office will be working on new versions of the system, but millions of programmers across the globe. This ultimate form of co-creation means that you can involve millions of people with their brand, you can create fans that infect their neighborhood in turn.

For now this works for software developments, but in time it’ll also go for electronics, furniture, clothing, food, even bank products. The big trend is called brand coming out.

Related trends

• Brand coming out

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