Nokia To Take Majority Stake In Symbian

Nokia said it has agreed with the U.K.'s Psion Plc. to acquire all of the latter company's shares in Symbian. Psion was the original developer of the Symbian OS, but spun off the Symbian company, which it co-owns with Nokia, Ericsson, Sony Ericsson, Panasonic, Samsung, and Siemens.

Nokia said in a statement that, when the transaction is completed in 2006, it will own about 63.3 percent of Symbian's stock compared to its current 32.2 percent ownership.

Some market analysts give the Symbian OS an early lead in the still-young smartphone market. However, the platform faces significant competition from Microsoft and PalmSource. Nokia said the move will help insure continued competition among smartphone platform vendors.

"It is vital to sustain Symbian's long-term market success in order to enable healthy competition in the OS market and to stimulate innovation throughout the value chain," Pertti Korhonen, Nokia's Chief Technology Officer said in a statement.

The Symbian platform was first used in early 2001 in Nokia's 9210 Communicator device. Since then, it has been used in other devices such as Nokia's Series 60 and smart devices by various vendors like Motorola and Fujitsu, which is developer of 3G phones for Japan's NTT DoCoMo. Companies that have licenses to use the Symbian platform include Symbian's co-owners as well as Fujitsu, Motorola, Samsung, Sanyo and Sendo.

The transaction will occur in two stages, Nokia said. The first stage will be a fixed payment to Psion of about 137.1 million euros and the second will royalties from Nokia to Psion for each Symbian OS device sold in 2004 and 2005. Nokia said it projected that portion of the payment to be about 1.23 million euros.

In a separate announcement, Psion said the sale will enable it to focus on its Psion Teklogix unit, which develops wireless devices and infrastructure.

This story courtesy of TechWeb.