How Will AT&T React After Nokia's Symbian Buy?
30 Jun 2008 - 09:02:14

Chloe Albanesius - PC Magazine Tue Jun 24, 11:15 AM ET Nokia on Tuesday purchased the remaining portion of Symbian it did not already own, and announced plans for a mobile open-source development foundation that will include partners like LG, Samsung, and most notably AT&T. Nokia will acquire the remaining 52 percent of Symbian for about $411 million, a deal expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year. Symbian and its employees will become part of Nokia, the company said. The two companies will then join forces with AT&T, LG, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, and Vodafone to launch the Symbian Foundation in the first half of 2009, an organization for developers to create open-source, mobile platforms and applications. "All of the elements of the foundation and the platform itself will be available royalty-free from the Symbian Foundation" on day one, Mary McDowell, executive vice president and chief development officer for Nokia, said during a conference call with reporters. The Symbian OS is popular abroad, but has not been widely embraced by U.S. carriers. AT&T has offered the occasional Symbian device like the , but is not regarded as a huge Symbian adopter. Among the other U.S. carriers, T-Mobile has shunned the platform. Sprint, Verizon, and Alltel are out of luck, as Symbian devices use the GSM network. Mark Siegel, a spokesman for AT&T's wireless business, said it was "impossible to say" whether AT...

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