Nokia announced a plan to acquire the 52% remaining Symbian shares it doesn’t already own and make the platform open source under the Eclipse open source license. Nokia have also announced the creation of the Symbian Foundation, which is an alliance of mobile vendors and application providers that any company can join. This move will definitely challenge Android, the open source operating system of Google. The Symbian is the operating system of Nokia’s smartphones and other mobile phone hardware manufacturers.

All of the major Symbian stakeholders like Sony Ericsson, Siemens, and Panasonic have accepted Nokia’s offer. The three companies represent almost 91% of the Symbian shares. Although Samsung, another Symbian stakeholder has no definitive answer from Nokia’s offer, Nokia expects them to accept its offer.

“This is a significant milestone in our software strategy” said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia. “Symbian is already the leading open platform for mobile devices. Through this acquisition and the establishment of the Symbian Foundation, it will undisputedly be the most attractive platform for mobile innovation. This will drive the development of new and compelling, web-enabled applications to delight a new generation of consumers.”

Read the announcement here

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