Nokia retakes full control of Symbian, as no one needs it

Nokia Oyj announced it would assume full control of Symbian platform returning management of the operating system it had previously given to the open source community. This week the Finnish handset maker made a statement that it would take care of Symbian platform development from April 2011 onwards, while the cross-industry Symbian Foundation will in the future take care of only licensing of the software.

In 2008 Nokia bought out other shareholders in Symbian and opened the software for any manufacturers to use for free on an open-source basis. But the OS failed to gain wide adoption and later when Android came, such manufacturers as Samsung Electronics and Sony Ericsson abandoned it for the Google’s brainchild.

"As other licensees have abandoned Symbian, Nokia had little option but to take full control," said Ben Wood, head of research at CCS Insight.

Nokia has remained the key contributor to the development of the software and has created some 95 percent of sales volumes of Symbian phones.

Symbian continues to lead the mobile market with a 37 percent share in the third quarter, but this is well down on levels just two years ago.

Its closest rival, Google's Android, had 17 percent of the market last quarter, just ahead of Apple, according to research firm Canalys.