  The era of the PC platform left a legacy of competitive strategies for the
future technologies to follow. However, this notion became more complicated,
once the future grew out to be a present with huge bundle of innovative
technologies, Internet capabilities, communication possibilities, and ease in
life. A major step of moving from a product phone to a smart phone, eventually
to a mobile device has created a new industry with humongous potential for
further developments. The current mobile platform market is witnessing a
platforms-war with big players such as Apple, Google, Nokia and Microsoft in a
major role. An important aspect of today's mobile platform market is the
contributions made through open source initiatives which promote innovation.
This paper gives an insight into the open-source software strategies of the
leading players and its implications on the market. It first gives a precise
overview of the past leading to the current mobile platform market share state.
Then it briefs about the open-source software components used and released by
Apple, Google and Nokia platforms, leading to their mobile platform strategies
with regard to open source. Finally, the paper assesses the situation from the
point of view of communities of software developers complementing each
platform. The authors identified relevant implications of the open-source
phenomenon in the mobile-industry.
