In a move to challenge the growing threat from Google and Apple, Nokia has bought mobile phone OS company Symbian.

Nokia has bought British software company Symbian. Nokia hopes that with the new acquisition, it could make mobile phone software free of charge. Symbian makes the operating system software that sits on so-called smart phones, handsets that can access the internet and play music. It is hope that with this software Nokia could move way ahead of its competitors with powerful hand sets. As mobile phones become more powerful and people do far more than just make calls and send texts.

Symbian’s operating system software, originally developed by UK company Psion, is now used to operate two-thirds of smart phones – handsets with computer-like capabilities – and 6pc of all mobile phones. Nokia’s purchase of Symbian – and the subsequent open source release of Symbian under the auspices of the non-profit Symbian Foundation is probably the largest ever donation of software to the free software community. Symbian, which will now be distributed free, is likely to make large in-roads into Microsoft’s tenuous 11 per cent share of the smart phone market, as the proprietary option becomes less appealing for reasons of cost and efficiency.

Symbian has about 60% of the global smart phone market with its technology in more than 200 million handsets. The recent entry of Apple into the market with its iPhone models has threatened the positions of Symbian and Nokia, which makes four out of every 10 phones sold worldwide.

That new product will be controlled by a non-profit organisation called the Symbian Foundation, which already has more than 20 members including Vodafone, Orange, Nokia, Samsung and LG. All members will be able to use the new operating system to install on handsets or develop applications free of charge. Analysts term the move by Nokia as a battle to become the Windows of the mobile phone software sector.

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