The Symbian operating system is to become open source in a move which will see Nokia acquire the 52% of Symbian that it does not own from Ericsson, Sony Ericsson, Matsushita, Panasonic and Siemens, for £204 million. Having acquired the company, it seems that Nokia will then donate it to a newly-formed Symbian Foundation.
With one eye on Googles Android, and the other on the Linux-based LiMo platform, Nokia plans to work with Sony Ericsson, Motorola and NTT DoCoMo to unite the Symbian S60 interface with the UIQ and MOAP(S) versions to create one open mobile software platform. Together with AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone, they plan to establish the Symbian Foundation to extend the appeal of the platform. Membership of the non-profit Foundation will be open to all organizations. The initiative is supported by current shareholders and management of Symbian, who have been actively involved in its development.
While Nokia will contribute the Symbian and S60 software to the Foundation, Sony Ericsson and Motorola will contribute technology from UIQ, while DoCoMo has indicated its willingness to contribute its MOAP(S) assets. From these contributions, the Foundation will provide a unified platform with a common UI framework. A full platform will be available for all Foundation members under a royalty-free licence, from the Foundations first day of operations. Membership of the Foundation will cost $1,500 (£750).
Contributions from Foundation members through open collaboration will be integrated to further enhance the platform. The Foundation will make selected components available as open source at launch. It will then work to establish the most complete mobile software offering available in open source. This will be made available over the next two years and is intended to be released under Eclipse Public License (EPL) 1.0.
The Foundations platform will build on the leading open mobile software platform, with more than 200 million phones, across 235 models, already shipped by multiple vendors and tens of thousands of third-party applications already available for Symbian OS-based devices. 
“10 years ago, Symbian was established by far sighted players to offer an advanced open operating system and software skills to the whole mobile industry,” says Symbian CEO, Nigel Clifford. “Our vision is to become the most widely used software platform on the planet, and indeed today, Symbian OS leads its market by any measure. Todays announcement is a bold new step to achieve that vision by embracing a complete and proven platform, offered in an open way, designed to stimulate innovation, which is at the heart of everything we do.”
Nokia CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, describes the establishment of the Foundation as: one of the biggest contributions to an open community ever made. He says: “Nokia is a strong supporter of open platforms and technologies, as they give the freedom to build, maintain and evolve applications and services across device segments and offer by far the largest ecosystem, enabling rapid innovation. Todays announcement is a major milestone in our devices software strategy.”
The Foundation is expected to commence operations during the first half of 2009, subject to the closing of the acquisition of Symbian by Nokia.
