This was quite unexpected, but Nokia together with AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone are going to build the Symbian Foundation, and will dedicate their time and efforts to open source mobile technology.

At the same time, Nokia has offered to acquire the software maker Symbian for EUR 3.647 per share, totalling at approximately EUR 264 million. Nokia plans to acquire the last shares of Symbian that are not under their name, and contribute all of it to open source in the Symbian Foundation.

Of course, this can only be seen as for one thing. And that’s the unification of the different competing Symbian-based software platforms in order to take on the real enemies. Which are Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone.

At this point, there has been no declaration about what the foundation itself will start working on, but for sure it will be for the unification and balance of the mobile software industry.

Read Nokia’s offer to acquire Symbian PR
Read Nokia and the Symbian Foundation PR