Mobile handset giant Nokia, already owner of 48 percent of Symbian Limited, announced today it will acquire the rest of the wireless software development company and create an organization to promote a unified open-source mobile platform spanning smartphones from Samsung, LG Electronics, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson as well as Nokia.

The Symbian Foundation will also include carriers and chipmakers AT&T, NTT DoCoMo, Vodafone, STMicroelectronics, and Texas Instruments. Current Symbian licensing fees will be replaced by a royalty-free license for all members of the Foundation, which is open to all organizations. Selected components will be available at launch with, Nokia says, a complete mobile software offering to be developed over the next two years.

Destined to compete with handheld operating systems from RIM, Microsoft, and Apple -- and, perhaps with most impact, the Android open-source OS promoted by Google -- the new Symbian platform will draw on not only the Symbian and S60 software donated by Nokia, but technologies from DoCoMo's MOAP and Motorola and Sony Ericsson's UIQ platforms.

According to Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, "The wide support for this initiative, uniting the industry around the Symbian platform, reflects the strong gravitational pull it has for application developers and other ecosystem players.

"Symbian is already the leading open platform for mobile devices," Kallasvuo added, "[and now] it will undisputedly be the most attractive platform for mobile innovation."

Symbian CEO Nigel Clifford said, "Ten years ago, Symbian was established ... to offer an advanced open operating system and software skills to the whole mobile industry. Our vision is to become the most widely used software platform on the planet, [and] today's announcement is a bold new step to achieve that vision."

More than 200 million Symbian OS phones have been shipped to date. Nokia cites Canalys and Strategy Analytics figures that give Symbian 60 percent of the converged mobile device segment and 7 percent of all mobile device sales in 2007.

Finland-based Nokia is paying 3.647 euros per share or approximately 264 million euros for the outstanding shares of Symbian. The company expects the acquisition to be completed during the fourth quarter of 2008.