Nokia snaps up Symbian... and makes it open source

 

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Posted on 24 Jun 2008 at 09:41

Nokia has announced that it has bought Symbian outright as part of a wider plan to create a new open-source mobile platform.

The world's biggest mobile maker was already the major shareholder in the Symbian consortium, but says it has now bought the remaining shares it didn't already own.

Subsequently, Nokia will now join forces with Sony Ericsson and Motorola to merge the S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) versions of the Symbian OS into one open mobile software platform.

This new non-profit partnership will be called the Symbian Foundation, and its members will also include AT&T, LG, Samsung and Vodafone.

"From these contributions, the Foundation will provide a unified platform with common UI framework," the Symbian press release states. "A full platform will be available for all Foundation members under a royalty-free license, from the Foundation's first day of operations."

The move is clearly a strike against Google's Android platform, which has signed up more than 30 partners across the industry. Android was dealt a blow yesterday, when it was revealed that handsets based on the open platform won't now ship until Q4, missing its summer launch target.

The inclusion of the touchscreen UIQ operating system in the mix also suggests that the new OS will be aimed at the iPhone. Nokia said last week that it would have a handset to rival the iPhone before the end of the year.

Yet despite proclaiming the benefits of open source, the Symbian Foundation won't be publishing all of its source code for quite some time. "The Foundation will make selected components available as open source at launch," it states. "It will then work to establish the most complete mobile software offering available in open source. This will be made available over the next two years and is intended to be released under Eclipse Public License (EPL) 1.0."