Nokia to migrate phone browser to open source

HELSINKI--Nokia announced today it will migrate its mobile Web browser to open source software, partnering with Apple Computer to use its Safari Internet browser as the core engine in its future web Series 60 phones.

The deal represents a shift in Nokia’s approach to the wireless Internet, having built its own WAP-based browser from scratch, but as network speeds become more robust and memory and processing capabilities increase wireless users are turning more to standard Internet pages on their mobile devices, said Franklin Davis, Nokia head of business development for Series 60 browsing.

Nokia is still actively backing the development of WAP-based sites, Davis said, but it is hoping that the supporting full-browsing will drive more use of wireless data services and encourage even more content providers to build WAP-supported sites.

“Even if you support full Web browsing, you’re talking about very big pages on small devices,” Davis said. “We do want as much content to be mobile-optimized as possible.”

Nokia’s current Series 60 browser does support limited Web browsing, but when Nokia decided to expand those capabilities, it opted to go with external software. Davis said that building a new browser from scratch is a project that could run upwards of $100 million. With so many browsers on the market, it made much more sense to use an outside browser, Davis said.

While Nokia looked at licensing a proprietary browser technology, he added, the licensing fees would have been too high, so Nokia opted to go with an open source solution. With open source software--Linux being the most common example--the core technology is basically free, and the code is available to all users, but any development or innovation on the platform is returned back to the open source community.

While the open source components come from KDE’s “Konqueror” project, Nokia will use the WebCore and JavaScriptCore developed by Apple to power its Safari engine. Nokia officials added that the company plans to cooperate with Apple in future developments on the platform and become an active participant in the open-source community.