Nokia buys out Samsung’s Symbian shares on road to Symbian Foundation

Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s road to establishing an open-source Symbian Foundation has just been cemented with Samsung’s reported acceptance of Nokia’s offer to buy-out Samsung’s shares in Symbian. Samsung is the last remaining share-holder in Symbian that stands between Nokia and their Symbian Foundation initiative. With their offer accepted by Samsung, Nokia will have ownership rights to the entire Symbian code-base, setting up the Finnish cellphone manufacturer to hand over the code-base to an open-source Symbian organization, the Symbian Foundation, that will allow any and all developers to jump on board the Symbian-ship.

With mounting pressure from Windows Mobile, the iPhone OS, and of course Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s Android, Nokia’s move to bring Symbian to the open-source table is logical. Nokia will have put up about $410 million to buy out all Symbian shareholders, which is no small amount. So it’s clear that Nokia is going to be backing Symbian for the foreseeable future.

[Via: EETimes]