Nokia to acquire the rest of Symbian and make it open source too
Nokia has announced its intention to buy the remaining 52% of the mobile platform Symbian which it doesn’t already own.
The $410 million deal has been okayed by the majority of the other shareholders, which include Sony Ericsson, Ericsson, Panasonic Mobile Communications and Siemens, with Samsung Electronics expected to follow.
At the same time the formation of the Symbian Foundation has been announced – an alliance between Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone Group who will all get royalty free access to the platform and it development – which seems to make strategic sense given the threat Symbian faces in the form of the LiMo Foundation and Google Android platforms. Parts of Symbian will even be made open source to match them.
This acquisition puts both Nokia and Symbian in a better position and things can only look rosy for them as Android continues to struggle.
(via PCW)
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