Nokia purchases all of Symbian, creates Symbian Foundation for royalty free OS
Tiny URL: http://tinyurl.com/6grezg
Nokia has announced today that it has offered a cash offer to acquire all of Symbian Limited that Nokia does not already own, at a price of EUR 3.647 per share. The net cash outlay from Nokia to purchase the approximately 52% of Symbian Limited shares it does not already own will be approximately EUR 264 ~ $410 million.
Nokia has received irrevocable undertakings from Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ), Panasonic Mobile Communications Co. Ltd. and Siemens International Holding BV to accept the offer, representing approximately 91% of the Symbian shares subject to the offer. Nokia also expects Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. to accept the offer.
Further, Nokia together with AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone announced the formation of hte Symbian Foundation.
As part of the initiative, Nokia will contribute the Symbian and S60 software to the Foundation. Sony Ericsson and Motorola today announced their intention to contribute technology from UIQ and DOCOMO has also indicated its willingness to contribute its MOAP(S) assets. From these contributions, the Foundation will provide a unified platform with common UI framework. A full platform will be available for all Foundation members under a royalty-free license, from the foundation’s first day of operations
This heats up the competition for open source mobile platforms in the market: Google Android, LiPS, LiMo and now the Symbian/S60 platform.
More information about the planned foundation can be found at www.symbianfoundation.org.
SOURCE: Nokia
