Nokia Acquires Symbian

The South Korean manufacturer Samsung Electronics, according to Reuters – has accepted Nokia’s (NOK) offer to acquire all of the shares of Symbian Limited that Nokia does not already own.
The Finland-based co. currently holds 47.9% of the Smartphone software maker Symbian ; a software licensing company, owned by wireless industry leaders and licensed by the world’s leading mobile phone manufacturers.

The net cash outlay from Nokia to purchase 52.1% of Symbian Limited shares it does not already own will be approximately $384 million. The co. only last month said it would buy out other shareholders of Symbian and make its software available to other phone makers without charging royalties. Nokia now has acceptances from all Symbian shareholders to sell their shares.

“They (Samsung) have accepted it,” Nokia spokesman said referring to the buyout offer.

Nokia’s complete acquisition of Symbian is the prelude to the establishment of the not-for-profit Symbian Foundation by Nokia, together with AT&T (T), LG Electronics, Motorola (MOT), NTT DoCoMo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson (SNE), STMicroelectronics (STM), Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN) and Vodafone Group Plc (VOD).

The demand for mobile devices continues to accelerate. By 2010 Symbian expects four billion people to join the global mobile conversation. With this in mind, industry leaders are coming together to create the most proven, open and complete mobile software platform – available for free.

To achieve this objective, the Symbian foundation will unify Symbian, S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) software and create an unparalleled open software platform for converged mobile devices, enabling the whole mobile ecosystem to accelerate innovation.

Symbian also intends expanding its collaboration with its rival Google Inc. (GOOG) to the operating system level as it moves toward granting free and open access to its software platform.

The foundation is expected to start operating during the first half of 2009.

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