Symbian CEO Nigel Clifford used this morning's opening keynote address at the Symbian Smartphone show in London to call on developers from across the computing and software world to focus on the new Symbian Foundation platform. "The eco-system is now bigger than Symbian," Clifford said.

He described the Symbian Foundation as being aimed at attracting developers who had previously been put off from developing for the mobile industry due to complex terms and conditions and licensing issues. "We used to live in an 'either / or' world. Either free code but a small mobile footprint or pedigree, or proven software at a cost. The Symbian Foundation combines both and doesn't require a trade-off for developers." Although the platform is not expected to be up and running until the first half of 2009, Clifford said that "the DNA for the foundation code" is already in place and running on new handsets. Symbian's main shareholder Nokia is currently in the process of buying out the other shareholders in the company to create the Symbian Foundation, which is set to compete with other open-source mobile platforms such as Google's Android. 

Commenting on the ten-year anniversary of Symbian's inception, Clifford said that the number of Symbian smartphones shipped surpassed the 200 million mark earlier this year and is on track to reach 250 million by year-end. He said Symbian is used in over 250 different handsets; the most recent - the Samsung I7110 - was unveiled yesterday and will be available in selected markets next month. Among the new announcements by Symbian and its key partners at the show were the Symbian Analysis Workbench (SAW), a visual analysis tool aimed at making it easier for Symbian developers to fix defects and optimise code, and ARM Profiler for Symbian OS, which claims to deliver high performance and reduced power consumption for Symbian-based devices. ARM and Huawei have also joined the Foundation, taking total global membership to 52 companies.