Open for business

24 June 2008 By Robert Cyran Follow @rob_cyran

The Finnish mobile giant will take control of the biggest smart phone software maker and offer its programs for free on an open source basis. This could make it harder for rival software groups to carve out a profitable niche in mobile.

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Nokia has agreed to buy the 52% of Symbian it doesn't own for E264m. The Finnish handset company will then establish a nonprofit foundation to control the maker of smart phone operating systems. Current Symbian shareholders Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and NTT Docomo will contribute software to the foundation, which will provide royalty free licenses to any manufacturers and operators that want to use its software. Parts of the software will be open source immediately, and the Symbian Foundation expects most will be opened up over the next two years.

The Symbian Foundation will have a board of ten members, appointed evenly among the following handset makers and operators: Nokia, LG Electronics, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, AT&T, NTT DoCoMo, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, and Vodafone.

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