Posix is the collective name of a family of related standards specified by the IEEE to define the API for software compatible with variants of the Unix operating system.
The battle for domination of the mobile OS space pits Symbian, which is owned by a consortium of handset manufacturers led by Nokia, against Windows Mobile 5.0, with Linux also in play, thanks primarily to Motorola. At the high end, there is also Research In Motion’s proprietary Java RTE, which RIM is endeavoring to position as a platform for broader enterprise mobility rather than just personal information management.
All the players recognize that getting third-party application developers on board is fundamental to their success because it will correlate directly to the number of apps available on their platforms. Also, they are all aware that Microsoft will increasingly seek to leverage its absolute dominance on the desktop to muscle its way onto the mobile device where Symbian is currently the clear market leader.
Bruce Carney, Cambridge, UK-based Symbian’s head of developer marketing, said Symbian has some 50,000 registered subscribers to its developer newsletter. While it is difficult to determine how many of them are full-time dedicated Symbian app developers, it is safe to say that the OS is ahead of most of its competitors in this respect.
The one huge exception is Microsoft, where all the millions of app developers are potentially working on WM5 too, and it is this shortfall that Symbian wants to address with the Posix on Symbian initiative. There are a lot of web servers and middleware, as well as desktop and server apps generally written with Posix, said Carney. On the enterprise side, there is a lot of software for Big Iron, and Posix covers multiple platforms and OSes. In the open source world in particular, he said about 60% on sites like SourceForge is written with Posix APIs.
Erik Jacobson, product manager at Symbian, said the idea is to enable developers to work in C for apps to run on the Symbian OS without having to worry about embedded space issues. He said the ultimate goal would be recompile and go but Symbian is not foolhardy enough to make such a claim at this stage.
