Nokia, the global leader in mobile handset sales, announced June 24 it was acquiring the remaining 52 million shares it does not already own of Symbian for $410 million. At the same time, Nokia and other mobile industry leaders announced the formation of the Symbian Foundation with membership open to all organizations.

Under the arrangement, Nokia will contribute the Symbian OS and S60 software to the foundation while Sony Ericsson, Motorola, DoCoMo, UIQ Technology and Fujitsu adding additional technology to the foundation's intellectual property pool.

"Our plans…are clearly enhancing its [Symbian open source] appeal to developers, solution providers and network operators," Lee Williams, who has been nominated as executive director of the foundation, said Dec. 4  at a Symbian partner event in San Francisco. "We already have strong U.S.-based representation with AT&T and Texas Instruments as initial members."

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