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In an unsurprising move on Tuesday, Nokia announced that it would buy out the stakeholders of Symbian for $410 million. Nokia already owns 48% of the UK-based mobile software company, and the deal will result in a new direction for both companies. As many news outlets are reporting, with the backing of the Finnish handset giant, Symbian could be poised to compete with Google’s Android mobile platform.

Sony Ericsson, Ericsson, Siemens, and Panasonic all held shares in Symbian, and they relinquished their claims for Nokia’s large offer. Symbian’s mobile operating system is already sold on more than 200 million phones from numerous manufacturers. The deal allows for the creation of the Symbian Foundation, whose mission is, “to bring to life a shared vision and to create the most proven, open and complete mobile software platform - available for free.” Symbian and Nokia, together with heavyweight partners such as AT&T, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, Vodaphone, and many others, will release Symbian’s software through an open source license, allowing companies to adopt and adapt it as needed.

The Symbian Foundation would make the platform available to handset manufacturers royalty free, another attempt to compete with Google’s open source Android. This not only allows companies to customize it for individual phones, but also allows outside developers to create applications that run on Symbian. As Kris Rinne, Senior Vice President of Architecture and Planning at AT&T said of the deal, “This [the Symbian Foundation] will create an environment that will encourage and enable developers to build compelling applications that will positively affect our customers’ lives and support AT&T in offering its differentiated services to consumers.”

Symbian is fully in support of the Nokia buy out, and no jobs are expected to be lost or cut. The reason behind the move was not consolidation of resources or the need to expand into new markets, but rather a mutual dedication to making cell phone software open source and available to third-party developers.

That being said, the announcement comes amid reports that Google’s Android platform is suffering delays. As the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, “Google now says that the handsets won’t arrive until the fourth quarter. And some cellular carriers and makers of programs that work with Android are struggling to meet that schedule, people familiar with the situation say.” The news is disappointing to fans of the “GPhone” and also to third-party developers, who are having trouble staying up with the changes to the platform as they develop add-ons.

While the Symbian Foundation and Google are set up as open source competitors, the iPhone is still subject to the notorious vertical integration of Apple. The phone is only available on AT&T’s network, and the software, developed in-house at Apple, is not open source. While the new model being released on July 11th will allow for third-party applications, developers must pay for the privilege of creating add-ons for the iPhone.

The creation of the Symbian Foundation will certainly be a milestone for software platforms for the mobile market, and industry watchers will be clamoring to see how the newly-formed open source non-profit will compete with Google Android.

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

By Haley January Eckels