In buying Symbian (News - Alert), Nokia does not necessarily change much in terms of its relationship to the operating system that underpins its mobile device strategy. Nokia has always been the biggest supporter of the Symbian platform, and all of its smartphones use some flavor of the Symbian OS.

 

Symbian also has been used by Sony Ericsson (News - Alert), LG and Samsung, so it’s not as though Symbian is in any way a Nokia-captive OS. But there is a shift: in a bid to solidify or expand its market share, Nokia has decided to create a separate Symbian Foundation that will license the operating system on an "open" basis, as Google (News - Alert) is doing as part of its Open Handset Alliance.

 

So far, Symbian Foundation members include Nokia, AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics (News - Alert), Texas Instruments and Vodafone.

 

In so doing, Nokia hopes to spur a wave of applications development, something everyone seems to agree is key to differentiation and success in the coming  broadband-based mobility market.