Acrodea, Brycen, HI Corporation, Ixonos, KTF, Opera Software, Sharp, TapRoot Systems and UIQ Technology have become the latest companies to add their support for the Symbian Foundation. This brings the number of companies supporting the Foundation to 40 companies, including the 10 initial board members: AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung Electronics, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone.
Since plans for the Symbian Foundation were announced, hundreds of organizations have registered their interest in joining the foundation via its website.
The Symbian Foundations plans include the acquisition of Symbian Limited by Nokia, expected to close in Q4, 2008, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. Software assets will be contributed to the foundation, including Symbian OS and S60 by Nokia, UIQ technology by Motorola and Sony Ericsson and MOAP(S) by NTT DoCoMo and Fujitsu. This contributed software will be available under a royalty-free license to foundation members from the first day of Symbian Foundation operations, expected to be in the first half of 2009. The Foundation will work to unify the platform, with the first unified foundation release expected in 2009. It will also will work to make the platform available in open source by June .
Speaking on behalf of the initial 10 board members, Sony Ericsson Chief Technology Officer, Mats Lindoff, says:
The mobile phone industry is a very dynamic industry that continues to evolve and develop. We are happy to see that so many developers and partners in the industry have expressed their support for the plans for the Symbian Foundation, as this will help drive the next level of innovation needed to deliver new user experiences on mobile phones.