ARM ties knot with Symbian Foundation

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 21 Oct 2008 at 14:03

ARM has confirmed that it will join the Symbian Foundation to get free access to its software.

The processor design company is one of nine new members to join the foundation, including Chinese technology company Huawei.

The foundation has gathered 52 members since Nokia paid $410 million for the software, which it promptly made royalty-free in response to new rivals such as Google's Android.

Nokia says the membership of the foundation, which includes all the major mobile phone makers, will give it an edge in the mobile phone software market in coming years.

Nokia claims the Symbian Foundation is a faster way to bring new products to the markets. Foundation members also avoid having to pay fees to outside software developers.

Nokia expects to release the first unified Symbian Foundation software next year and introduce a completely new platform by June 2010.