03 September 2008

Nokia says Samsung accepts offer
for Symbian buyout

Nokia made waves with their recent announcement that they wanted to buy out other shareholders of the UK based Smartphone software maker Symbian for about $410 million, make it open source mobile OS and offer royalty-free software platform to other phone makers in response to new rivals such as Google's Android, Linux mobile and Appel’s iPhone.

Samsung has become a Symbian shareholder more than a five years ago by acquiring 5.0% shareholding in Symbian for a total consideration of 17.0 million Pounds Sterling and today Nokia confirmed that Samsung Electronics had accepted Nokia's offer to buy out its stake in software firm Symbian

"They have accepted it" Nokia spokesman said referring to the buyout offer and Nokia now has acceptances from all Symbian shareholders to sell their shares as Sony Ericsson, Panasonic and Siemens had already agreed to sell their stakes in Symbian.

These are the last days of the Symbian as we know it, now it’s clear that Symbian will becomes a part of the Nokia Empire later this year. So let them do what they need to do and let's move on, only time will show if this was a wise move and who will win this mobile OS 'race'!?

Nokia will contribute Symbian's assets to the not-for-profit organization, Symbian Foundation, in which it would unite with leading handset makers, network operators and communications chipmakers to create an open-source platform.