Nokia buys Symbian, opens it for war with Google Android
With Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android platform getting all the press these days, it’s easy to forget that another company, Nokia, is still by far and away the worldwide leader in mobile sales. It is a sleeping giant. And with the two noisy newcomers in its cave, it has awoken — and it’s hungry.
Not even a day after the buzz-worthy purchase of the location-based mobile social network, Plazes, Nokia has made a much larger move. One that will continue to evolve the mobile landscape: It has bought the Symbian mobile operating system, and will set it free.
Symbian is a mobile operating system that runs primarily on the ARM architecture used in Nokia, Sony Erricsson and Samsung devices. Symbian originated at Psion, and found its way onto Nokia handsets starting with the original Communicator. Symbian found a good home at Nokia, and its growth as a mobile platform grew as Nokia dominated the mobile handset market from 2000 onwards.
Nokia's bold move should bring considerable competition to the mobile market.
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