Psion’s tussle with shareholders irate over its proposed sale of its Symbian stake to Nokia is throwing up some interesting background to the deal. .In a meeting with shareholders Psion chairman David Potter suggested that some of the shareholders in Symbian were effectively blocking an IPO, that it was therefore “very unlikely to occur”, and that there were “very material” risks of Psion’s shareholder value being locked into Symbian, and diminishing if commoditisation of the handset business sucked value out of the company’s offerings. In addition, Symbian remains loss-making, and the cost of maintaining its position will in Potter’s estimation will increase “in order to compete against Linux and Microsoft and the rest of the market that is there”. Read the rest of the article at The Register.
MS, Linux, board battles – Psion Boss Lists the Threats to Symbian
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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The cell phone industry is soooooo blatantly anti-competitive, it is just amazing. What you have is a consortium of companies (who are all represented in symbian) who will basically do anything to keep other companies out.
I am happy that MS is trying to get into the cell phone industry because it means more competition and i am no fan of MS. Symbian is indicative of how business is really run. that is not a free market. its corporate socialism and i don’t like it because it is a mechanism which keeps innovation out just as MS does.
I like this Potter. I would follow his lead if I had a stake.
The cell phone industry really brings the term co-opetition to new heights. Let’s see, Symbian is owned by Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung, and other top handset manufacturers who are all viciously competetive with one another. At the same time, many of them use Series 60 which makes Nokia, the most intense competitor in the field, a partner. If the Nokia purchase of Psion’s Symbian share goes through, that will make it even more confusing. Partners of Nokia through Symbian will be trying to kill Nokia while benefitting it at the same time. What an industry!