The ten initial board members of the Symbian Foundation - AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung Electronics, Sony Ericsson, ST-NXP Wireless, Texas Instruments and Vodafone- have nominated Lee Williams as the Executive Director for the planned foundation.
Lee is currently head of the S60 organization in Nokia's Devices business.
"We are delighted to have such a strong and experienced leader to head the Symbian Foundation" said Kris Rinne, senior vice president, architecture and planning, AT&T on behalf of the initial board members.
"Lee Williams is well known in our industry and has been a driving force in the establishment of the foundation. Following an extensive, independent selection process, we believe that he is the best candidate to lead the foundation. He will now work to ensure we get the most complete and competitive Symbian Foundation platform offering and setup the operations needed to drive the platform to its next phase of evolution as quickly as possible."
"I feel honored to have been invited to serve in this role", said Lee Williams. "This is a great opportunity to directly help deliver on the promise of the foundation, working with the stakeholders and prospective members who are so committed to make this initiative a success. To me, there can be no more exciting role in the mobile software world than to lead the Symbian Foundation."
So far, 52 companies have now announced their support for the planned Symbian Foundation, which was officially unveiled in June 2008. This includes 8 device manufacturers, 7 semiconductor companies, 9 mobile network operators, 27 services and software companies and 1 financial services provider.
Lee Williams will remain in his current role as head of the S60 organization in Nokia's Devices business until the foundation and its leadership team are in place and operational, which is currently slated to be by 2010. |
