In preparation for taking Symbian open-source and royalty free for Symbian Foundation partners, Nokia has spent the last few months buying out all of the other shareholders. As of this morning, the job is done; Nokia has announced that the last shareholder involved, Samsung, has accepted their offer.
The cumulative total for all of the buyouts will set Nokia back around $410 million. That’s not exactly well-wishin’ money, but Nokia’s hoping the investment will cement their platform position against the ever increasing pressure of the iPhone, Google Android, and Windows Mobile.
That seems like a good move for a mobile phone provider to do. It would think it would ensure that all the bugs are worked out for their phones to work with Symbian as opposed to working with an external company’s OS and having to coordinate efforts around each product.