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Nokia already owns 48% of Symbian Ltd.

Mobile phones are a very hot market and smartphones in particular are some of the most popular devices on the market. The biggest growth in the cell phone market is for smartphones and some sources say that 60% of current smartphones currently use the Symbian OS.

Mobile phone giant Nokia currently sells about 40% of all phones sold globally according to eWeek and it owns a 48% share of Symbian Limited. Nokia has made an offer to purchase the remaining outstanding shares of Symbian Ltd. at around $5.67 per share for a deal that will cost Nokia a total of $410 million.

According to News.com, the current Symbian Ltd. shareholders that own the 52% Nokia wants to acquire include Ericsson, Sony Ericsson, Panasonic, Siemens and Samsung.

All shareholders with the exception of Samsung have accepted Nokia’s offer to purchase their shares. Nokia says that it expects Samsung to accept the offer as well. Analysts see the move by Nokia to consolidate the number one smartphone OS with the largest seller of handsets worldwide as a clear indication that Nokia intends to defend its position as the top cell phone maker against the likes of Google and Apple fervently.

Nokia and other electronics makers are also forming a new alliance called the Symbian Foundation to drive the development of the operating system. The Symbian OS will be given to the foundation members free from royalties.

Google’s open source Android OS is a method for the search giant to make money via cell phone advertising. Nokia sees profits coming from ads served to mobile users, not from charging for the OS itself much like Google’s vision for Android.

DailyTech reported today that handsets based on Google Android are being pushed to launch in late 2008 or early 2009.

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Yay!
By spluurfg on 6/25/2008 2:38:22 AM , Rating: 2
Symbian will now have a truly deep well of capital to draw on if the deal goes through. They're up against Microsoft, Google, and Apple, so I'm sure it'll come in handy.




RE: Yay!
By RamarC on 6/25/2008 9:41:11 AM , Rating: 2
deep well to draw from??? nokia buying outstanding shares doesn't infuse capital into symbian so where does the 'well' come from?

anyway, nokia created symbian and has always had symbian in its back pocket, so nothing is going to change. nokia can now do whatever it wants without the illusion of maintaining an open development community.


RE: Yay!
By spluurfg on 6/25/2008 1:10:34 PM , Rating: 2
Well, if Nokia has a 100% interest in Symbian, Nokia can essentially give them cash via 'dilutive' capital raising, recaps, etc. Pretty much all of Nokia's smartphone line-up is powered by Symbian OS, so they have every reason to make it as competitive as possible.


Interesting move
By DeepBlue1975 on 6/25/2008 3:08:19 PM , Rating: 3
I hope, if the deal gets done, that Nokia does a better job of overhauling the Symbian OS better than it is doing now.

I myself own an n95 which I like very much, but having used windows mobile 5, Symbian feels limited in some areas, specially in the UI customization department and I usually found applications for WM more flexible and powerful than symbian ones.
The only reason I didn't get an HTC Kaiser for myself is because it weights almost 50% more than the n95 and thus I can't keep a thing like that in my shirt's pocket, and the fact that having to slide the big qwerty keyboard for typing a simple text message while on the street isn't as easy as with the n95...
If symbian doesn't improve quite a bit in the next year or two, I guess my next smartphone will be more likely to have another mobile OS...




Nokia
By pauldovi on 6/24/2008 8:36:59 PM , Rating: 2
I have found to have the most innovative devices. They just need to improve their availability and marketing state-side.




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