Nokia today bolstered the Symbian Foundation with the addition of multiple key new members. HP, MySpace and SanDisk lead the new sign-ons and each have their own different reasons for joining the open-source mobile OS project. HP hopes to improve its support for managing Symbian; MySpace hopes to further refine its MySpace app for the phone throuhg the open code; SanDisk hopes to improve the use of storage for multimedia apps. None of the three has given clues as to how soon products will appear that take advantage of Foundation membership.

Other companies joining the ranks of the Foundation include PowerVR graphics chip maker Imagination as well as Atelier, Gemalto, Mobica, Nanoradio, Omron, Qualcomm, SESCA, VirtualLogix and GPS chip designer SiRF.

The expansion significantly backs Symbian's hardware support and is a partial blow to Microsoft, which has often counted on its alliances with hardware makers for its strategy. HP hasn't given any signs that it plans to switch its iPAQ line to Symbian.