Nokia reabsorbs Symbian smartphone software

Nokia has taken back control of the Symbian operating system, 18 months after it set up a non-profit foundation to oversee its development, reports BBC News.

Nokia will control the future direction of the the world's most popular smartphone software from April 2011.

Analysts said the move was inevitable as firms abandoned Symbian for rival software such as Google's Android.

The Symbian Foundation – a consortium of firms that oversees the software – will become a licensing body.

"There has since been a seismic change in the mobile market but also more generally in the economy, which has led to a change in focus for some of our funding board members," said Tim Holbrow, executive director of the Symbian Foundation.

"The result of this is that the current governance structure for the Symbian platform - the foundation - is no longer appropriate."
He said that as of April 2011 it was "unlikely" that the foundation would need "any employees".

The decision comes less than two years after Nokia paid 264m euros to buy out the other shareholders in Symbian.