Nokia has announced that it is buying out the 52 percent of Symbian that it didn't already own and opening up the platform. Nokia and a number of other companies including AT&T, LG, and Samsung have also announced the creation of the Symbian Foundation.Now, open source software is great for developers because it mean that anyone can easily look at the code, tweak it, and write applications designed to run well on the platform. But ther's also a huge benefit for telecom companies. Nokia will provide access to the Symbian OS royalty-free to members of the Symbian Foundation. And anyone can join the foundation for a nominal $1500 annual fee.
Symbian currently has about 60 percent of the mobile browser market share. The move to make the platform open source should help Nokia and Symbian maintain that lead in the face of challenges from the LiMo Foundation and Google's Linux-based Android platform.
[via OStatic]
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