Nokia Closes on Symbian Deal; Foundation in Sight
Mobile networking firm Nokia now has the requisite majority shares in Symbian Limited to complete the purchase of the mobile phone OS manufacturer. All Symbian employees will become Nokia employees as of February 1, 2009.
Nokia's having reached the 99.9% share in Symbian also clears the way for the Symbian Foundation that was first announced in June 2008. The foundation originally included Nokia, AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, ST-NXP Wireless, Texas Instruments and Vodafone. Its goal is to open up the Symbian platform so as to innovate development on all the mobile phones of the member companies.
Since June, the Symbian Foundation has grown to 60 members and 300 more are ready to jump on board, according to Lee Williams, the newly nominated executive director. The foundation commits to providing a complete open source solution for mobile network devices under the Eclipse Public License 1.0 by 2010. Until then the member companies will be committing assets and resources to the foundation. Nokia will provide its S60 components, Motorola and Sony Ericsson will donate UIQ, and NTT DOCOMO and Fujitsu will contribute MOAP(S), the Mobile Oriented Applications Platform for Symbian OS.
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