Nokia joins Eclipse
Ask any handyman. If you want to build something, you have to have good tools. That’s at the heart of Nokia’s announcement today that it has joined the open source association called the Eclipse Foundation to help it develop tools to design mobile applications.
Nokia, as a strategic developer and board member, is the first mobile handset manufacturer affiliated with Eclipse. The foundation was created in 2001, at first through the impetus of IBM and in 2004 as an independent entity. Its aim is to create open source developer tools principally using Java and C/C++ programming languages. Nokia, through its developer program Forum Nokia, has supported the Eclipse platform since 2004 with some of the Finnish company’s platforms.
Judith Hurwitz, president and principal analyst with Hurwitz & Associates, says the announcement is a win-win for both parties. Eclipse will get mobile developer expertise it hasn’t had, and Nokia will be a first mover in the mobile community in a trend toward open source development, she says.