Open Kernel Labs has announced availability of OK:Symbian, a ready-to-run paravirtualized version of the Symbian smartphone platform. OK Labs Secure HyperCell Architecture lets the Symbian platform be used as a guest operating system running in a secure hypercell on top of the OK Labs OKL4 microvisor.
Currently, the Symbian platform runs on select handsets from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and other Symbian licensees. While the creation of the Symbian Foundation and the opening of the Symbian platform code broaden the market of the mobile OS, but chipset vendors, mobile OEMs, and mobile network operators still face the challenge of porting and hosting the Symbian platform on both current chipsets and new mobile hardware.
OK:Symbian lets developers and vendors:
- Run multiple mobile OSes or multiple instances of the Symbian platform on a single device
- Migrate legacy the Symbian platform, wireless stacks, and applications to new hardware architectures and handsets
- Consolidate hardware (e.g., baseband and application CPU cores) for more aggressive price-points in handsets based on the Symbian platform
- Create new mobile-to-enterprise virtualization (M2E) enabled devices based on the Symbian platform (M2E is a set of joint solutions developed by Citrix Systems and OK Labs for delivering enterprise applications to mobile devices)
