With Google readying its Android OS and Apple already making strides with its iPhone OS, it’s only natural that Nokia should be looking to firm up its interests in the OS area. So it’s hardly surprising to hear that Nokia is currently buying up all the remaining third-party shares of the Symbian OS, so that it can exact complete control over its future development.
The biggest shareholder (besides Nokia), Samsung, has just agreed this week to sell its shares to Nokia. It’s arguable the last step on the ladder for phase one of Nokia’s plans to gallop bravely on, towards an open source mobile OS future.
In June this year, Nokia announced that it would buy-out every shareholder of the UK-based smartphone software developer, Symbian, for a cool $410 million (about £200 million). The grand scheme is for Nokia to then make its software royalty-free in a bid to unite leading handset manufacturers, network operators and communications chipmakers for the benefit of an open-source platform
As a response to companies such as Apple, and more specifically Google (whose Android OS stands to challenge a much broader chunk of Nokia’s current market dominance than Apple’s iPhone), it’s really quite a giant step. Say what you like about Nokia, but it certainly doesn’t do things by halves.
(Via Reuters)
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