Nokia's next Series 60 browser to borrow from Apple Safari

- Gary Thayer, Editor

June 13, 2005 -- (MobileVillage) -- Nokia (NYSE: NOK) announced today that it is using open source software -- largely from Apple -- as the basis of a new mobile browser for its Series 60 smartphone operating system. The new browser will allow Series 60 phone users to browse full Web pages on a smartphone screen.

The new Series 60 browser will use the same open source components, WebCore and JavaScriptCore, that Apple uses in its popular Safari Internet browser. The Safari browser is based on KHTML and KJS from KDE's "Konqueror" open source project. Nokia says it intends to continue its collaboration with Apple and participate in the open source community to further develop those components.

Nokia says the new Series 60 browser will support all features of the current Series 60 browser, and will be available to all Series 60 licensees as a standard Series 60 application during the first half of 2006. Besides Nokia devices, the browser can be found in smartphones by LG, Lenovo, Panasonic and Samsung among others.

According to a Nokia-conducted consumer research study among Series 60 smartphone users, over 50 percent of data traffic was generated by browsing.

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