Symbian is a mobile operating system (OS) targeted at mobile phones that offers a high-level of integration with communication and personal information management (PIM) functionality. Symbian OS combines middleware with wireless communications through an integrated mailbox and the integration of Java and PIM functionality (agenda and contacts). The Symbian OS is open for third-party development by independent software vendors, enterprise IT departments, network operators and Symbian OS licensees.
Symbian, the company which makes the OS, was founded in 1998 and became jointly owned by the main mobile phone manufacturers including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola and others. The aim was to produce a standard operating system for a new breed of mobile phones which had very powerful computing abilities (the so-called "smartphones"). There was also perhaps a desire to stop Microsoft taking over the mobile computing world the way they had taken over the desktop computing world. Symbian was a way for manufacturers to stay in control of their smartphones' operating system.
Symbian is designed to emphasise compatibility with other devices, especially removable media file systems. Early development of EPOC led to adopting FAT as the internal file system, and this remains, but an object-oriented persistence model was placed over the underlying FAT to provide a POSIX-style interface and a streaming model. The internal data formats rely on using the same APIs that create the data to run all file manipulations. This has resulted in data-dependence and associated difficulties with changes and data migration.
