ARM, Huawei, Visa, nine others set to join Symbian

The list of supporters for the Symbian Foundation is set to grow yet again, with credit card company Visa, British chip designer ARM, Chinese technology group Huawei and nine other, unnamed companies planning on joining the group to get access to its software, according to a Tuesday Reuters report. The Symbian Foundation, a not-for-profit group started by cellphone maker Nokia to promote the Symbian operating system for mobile devices, is growing and includes all the major mobile phone makers, giving it an edge over rival Google and its upcoming Android operating system.

Nokia bought out UK-based smartphone software developer Symbian for $410 million in June in order to share resources and information with the members of the newly created Symbian Foundation in developing an open source platform. The members then get royalty-free access to the resulting products, and avoid paying fees to other software developers. Nokia is expecting to release the first version of the unified Symbian Foundation software in 2009, with a completely new platform due out in June of 2010.

Filed under: industry, software, mobile phones
Other story tags: Nokia, Android, Symbian, ARM, Huawei, Symbian Foundation, Visa