That’s right you heard me right, Nokia is finally buying Symbian out. It was something bound to happen. One of the top seller of regular and smart cell phones will completely own Symbian. And there’s a twist to this transaction too. Nokia is going to go open source on Symbian software.

The remaining 52% of Symbian will go down for about $410 million. Not too bad Nokia, not to bad! And now the fun part follows. After the transaction will be complete, Nokia, joined by none others than Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Japanese NTT DoCoMo will start a Coalition of the Willing-like foundation which will turn the software into a free, open source resource. The three different Symbian versions will be combined into one larger open platform.

According to Nokia, AT&T, LG Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC are also interested in joining. And probably more carriers and cell phone manufacturers will follow.

All in all this is a good and, I would say expected move from Nokia. With competition closing in on mobile OS, open sourcing Symbian seems like the smart thing to do. Good thing for them Android is taking too damn long to come out. Windows Mobile is however, a worthy adversary, and with LiMo’s Linux intentions we could witness a mobile OS revolution.

via AP