Nokia Takeover of Symbian is Complete

Nokia’s announced takeover of Symbian has passed its last hurdle by purchasing Samsung’s stake of foundation for a reported $410 million.

Nokia first announced this takeover bid of the other members of Symbian in June 2008 to pool in the Symbian operating system with Nokia’s S60, Sony Ericsson’s UIQ and NTT/DoCoMo’s MOAP.

This new Symbian Foundation is expected to start operating in the first half of 2009 but not fully until 2010 with it’s royalty-free open software platform for mobile phones.

The move may be perceived as a way to compete with Android and the iPhone but my sense is this will ultimately be setup as an investment to be sold off to mobile software “winner” in the 2010’s.

In July 2008 when the Android Symbian merger rumors were flying Nokia vice president, David Rivas, stated that Nokia has “no plans” to combine Symbian with Android…at this time.