On 24 June Nokia, supplier of the world's most popular smartphone platform (the S60), announces it is buying the rest of Symbian for €264 million and then - wait for it - turning it over to the Symbian Foundation! The Foundation is a non-profit with 20 or so members whose goal is to help developers adopt Symbian OS. 10 years ago Symbian was just another British company marketing the Psion organizer before it stopped its hardware business to concentrate its OS for smartphones - smart move! With the support of Nokia and also Sony Ericsson, Panasonic and Siemens, Symbian has gained 60% of the global smartphone market amounting to over 200 million phones.
Clearly Nokia wasn't going to be left out with Google's Android (and the Open Handset Alliance) on the one hand and the iPhone phenomenon on the other. Nokia definitely isn't behaving like a traditional hardware company!
So where does that leave Microsoft's Mobile Windows whose licensing costs about $8 to $15 for each handset and has only 13% of the whole handset market??
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