Symbian Foundation OS could reach devices by end of 2009

Symbian Foundation Executive Vice President David Wood has laid out a development roadmap in a blog post for the Foundation's open source mobile operating system.

Wood said that the Foundation is planning two platform releases each year, and that the first devices using Symbian^2, its first planned OS, could reach the market by the end of this year.

Symbian^2 will be based on S60 5.1 and should be functionally complete by mid-year and should be "hardened" for release closer to the end of 2009. Its second release, Symbian^3 will follow six months later, with a "hardened" release planned for the middle of 2010.

Progress toward the milestones will be governed by contributions from the community and by manufacturer integration plans, customization levels, and design choices.