Nokia Goes For 100% Stake In Symbian

Nokia’s been in love with Symbian for a long time now, and it’s probably decided that its 48% ownership isn’t enough to satisfy it, and will acquire the other 52% for about $412 million to make it the sole owner.

The juicy bit is that instead of hoarding Symbian all for itself, Nokia will be turning things over to the Symbian Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose only goal will be the advancement of the Symbian platform. Motorola and Sony Ericsson have both signed up to contribute UIQ assets, while NTT DoCoMo who uses Symbian in a number of its phones will be donating code as well.

Other Symbian Foundation members include Texas Instruments, Vodafone, Samsung, LG and AT&T. This move certainly looks like it was made with Google’s Android platform in mind. The foundation plans to make the entire platform available as open source in the next two years.