Nokia’s long-standing efforts to broaden the reach of its Symbian mobile software got a boost today on the open source front.
As LinuxPlanet reports, Nokia remains a leading player globally in the mobile space even though it’s struggled in the U.S. With its aggressive moves on the open source front, Nokia hopes to expand its footprint further as it looks to better compete against a growing cadre of mobile players that includes Apple, RIM and Google.
It’s official. Nearly two years ago, Nokia spent $410 million to buy all of Symbian, the mobile operating system software in which it already owned a major stake — and promised to turn it into a new, royalty-free mobile software platform.
Today, Nokia announced that the Symbian Foundation, an organization it created after the buyout, will release the software as open source under the Eclipse Pubic License.
“We’ve spent a lot of time at the Foundation with partners to work things out, scrub the code, and we’re very proud of it,” Larry Berkin, head of global alliances for the Symbian Foundation and its general manager in the U.S., told InternetNews.com. Berkin also noted the open source release comes four months ahead of the Foundation’s original estimate of June 2010.
