Mobile manufacturers unite to create open mobile platform

24 June 2008

The Symbian Foundation is to be an open operating system supported by Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG and Motorola

Symbian has beaten Google Android to the punch with the launch of the Symbian Foundation, a single Symbian operating system supported by the world's biggest mobile manufacturers.

News of the Symbian Foundation will be warmly received by developers who now only have to create smartphone applications for one OS rather than the multiple Symbian variants used by each of the manufacturers. As a result, each new application developed for Symbian will be available to billions of mobile users.

Nokia is enabling the creation of the Symbian Foundation by acquiring the remaining shares of Symbian Ltd that it doesn't already own and contributing the Symbian and S60 software to the foundation. Meanwhile, Sony Ericsson and Motorola have announced that they will contribute technology from UIQ.

Members of the Symbian Foundation include Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, NTT DOCOMO, AT&T, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone.