Apple and Nokia to collaborate for Browser Solutions on Mobile Phone

Apple Corporation is joining hands with Nokia to develop a web browser for mobile phones. And they would be using Open Source solutions for this effort. Nokia wants to use this application for their Series 60 mobile phone software platform, which forms a bulk of their Smartphones range. Series 60 currently uses a user interface layer that runs on the Symbian smart phone operating system.

This system is currently powering phones from a lot of companies like LG Electronics Inc., Lenovo Mobile Co. Ltd., Panasonic Mobile Communications Co. Ltd., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sendo International Ltd., and Siemens AG. All of these take their licenses from Nokia and the move might bring about a change in all these range of mobile solutions.

This upcoming browser would be using two major components from the Apple’s Safari project, which is based on KHTML, and KJS both of which are open source part of the web browser Konqueror. The license of this project means that the companies involved would have to make available the source code for the version they sell after modifying it to suit their requirements.

Nokia is not for the first time showing interest in Open Source applications. Last month, they announced that Linux kernel developers could make use of Nokia-patented technologies under certain conditions. However, they would be blocking the use of their patents for the companies, which apposed the public use of their patented technologies in Linux. Quite a complicated scenario for the end developer.

Opera is currently the popular choice of browser for this platform for mobile computers. They would probably the most affected by this latest deal. However, it would take sometime before both of these companies can release something in the public.