Nokia Corp., the world’s biggest maker of mobile phones, offered to buy the 52 percent of Symbian Ltd. it doesn’t own for about $410 million to create royalty-free operating systems for handsets.
Finland-based Nokia will contribute its S60 software and Symbian operating system to a foundation for an open-source platform for mobile phones, together with technology from Schaumburg-based Motorola Inc., Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications and NTT DoCoMo Inc.
Symbian’s free software will compete with Microsoft Corp., Research In Motion Ltd., Google Inc. and Apple Inc. in operating systems for hand-held computers and smart phones. Google said Monday that it was on schedule to deliver the first handsets that run its Android operating system to customers by the second half of this year.
Nokia’s open-source initiative “is strategically a very smart move,” said Matthias Maus, an analyst at BHF-Bank AG in Frankfurt. The open-source system will give the foundation access to a greater developer community to create more applications, he said.
Symbian, based in London, is the world’s biggest maker of operating systems for advanced mobile phones, with a 60 percent market share in the first quarter, Nokia said, citing data from research firm Canalys. The Linux platform has 12 percent of the market, followed by Research In Motion and Microsoft, both holding 11 percent.
“Through this acquisition and the establishment of the Symbian foundation, it will undisputedly be the most attractive platform for mobile innovation,” Nokia Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said in the statement.
In an open-source operating system, the underlying code is shared freely. Nokia expects the acquisition to be completed during the fourth quarter of 2008 and is subject to regulatory approval.
