Nokia buys Symbian, opens up smartphone software
source: http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSHEL00651520080624
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Nokia will pay $410 million for the remaining shares in UK-based smartphone software maker Symbian and make its software royalty-free to other phone makers, in response to new rivals such as Google.
The world's biggest cell phone maker said on Tuesday it would contribute Symbian's assets to a not-for-profit organization in which it would unite with leading handset makers, network operators and communications chipmakers to create an open-source platform with wide industry appeal.
Symbian software is used in two-thirds of smartphones -- mobile handsets with computer-like capabilities -- but Apple's iPhone or new categories of phones based on Google's Android software could challenge that dominance.
Symbian was formed exactly a decade ago to the day in London by a consortium of top mobile handset makers looking for a standardized way of building software to run new phones. It was the descendant of software used to run Psion electronic organizers popular with business professionals in the 1990s.
The world's biggest cell phone maker said on Tuesday it would contribute Symbian's assets to a not-for-profit organization in which it would unite with leading handset makers, network operators and communications chipmakers to create an open-source platform with wide industry appeal.
Symbian software is used in two-thirds of smartphones -- mobile handsets with computer-like capabilities -- but Apple's iPhone or new categories of phones based on Google's Android software could challenge that dominance.
Symbian was formed exactly a decade ago to the day in London by a consortium of top mobile handset makers looking for a standardized way of building software to run new phones. It was the descendant of software used to run Psion electronic organizers popular with business professionals in the 1990s.
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