Nokia Acquires Remainder Of Symbian, Launches Symbian Foundation

by Justin

Symbian Logo The big news in the mobile tech world today is Nokia’s announcement of a cash offer that’ll purchase the remaining 52% of Symbian Limited shares they don’t already own. The offer sits at about 264 million Euros, about $410 million US, and Nokia has already seen approval for 91% of the outstanding shares, with Samsung expected to approve their 9% ownership as well.

Nokia has also announced, in partnership with AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, Samsung, NTT DoCoMo, Sony Ericcson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, and Vodafone, the launch of the Symbian Foundation. The Symbian Foundation will unite the Symbian OS with UIQ, S60, and MOAP(S) software in order to create an open mobile platform that will be completely standardized, free, and open source.

Nokia’s bet on Symbian is based on the operating system’s current popularity, and by making a standardized and open source platform the company expects it to be the most popular mobile OS for developers. Developer loyalty is key to the success of any operating system. If Nokia provides the platform for an army of developers to create all types of apps, and they do, Symbian will be a surefire success. Not everyone is placing their money on Symbian though. Om Malik of GigaOm gives Symbian 1/2 odds of attaining the dominant mobile OS position, but LiMo’s mobile Linux platform roughly 2/3 odds. Definitely click on the link to GigaOm and check out an awesome analysis of Nokia’s acquisition.

Of course, the whole deal is subject to approval by the European Commission, but should go through in Q4 of this year after which all Symbian employees will become Nokia employees.