Nokia Corporation, the leader in mobile phones, announced that it would purchase the remaining shares of Symbian Ltd. and release the code of the Symbian OS as open-source through the Symbian Foundation. Symbian Ltd. has been jointly owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Matsushita, Siemens, Sony Ericsson and Samsung. It produces the Symbian OS and licenses it to companies such as Arima, BenQ, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Matsushita, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sharp, Siemens and Sony Ericsson.

Analysts estimate that the GB£ 210 million Nokia is willing to spend for the acquisition is money well spent, considering that the OS has been shipped on 200 million devices and bring annual royalties revenues of GB£ 179 million. Earlier this year, Nokia Corporation acquired Trolltech, a Norwegian company providing software development platforms and frameworks, which will certainly prove useful for the development of Nokia’s Internet tablets.
The first generation of Apple iPhones did sent shockwaves across the mobile phone market because of the way it revolutionized the user interface. iPhone sales rose to a peak during the first quarter of 2008 before declining. The ties with carriers has proven to be a serious hindrance to its marketability in some European countries, let alone the staggering price increase over the Atlantic. In the meantime, Apple has partially opened its platform to third party applications, stated its intention to reach business customers and released the second iPhone generation. The iPhone uses proprietary software and Apple has no plans whatsoever to licence it operating system on other hardware. The company bought a chip designer to ensure it would not have to depend on chipmakers in the future, so however successfull the iPhone will be, Apple intends to keep its hardware and software proprietary.
The contender that could seriously represent a threat for Nokia is Google Inc. Android OS, expected some time in 2009. Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics have already expressed interest in the royalty-free operating system and Google Inc. vouched US$ 10 million in prizes for third-party developpers, which would help foster a broad user base.
By changing Symbian OS from proprietary to open-source, Nokia is trying to keep the attention of current and potential licensees and pave the way for Symbian to become an ubiquitous operating system for mobile devices. Unlike Android, which is still under development, Symbian already has an entire decade of refinement behind it, but the real challenge will be to match up with the iPhone’s revolutionary interface and get broad adoption.