Nokia to Acquire Rest of Symbian for $410 Million

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 24, 2008 - 5:09am.

Espoo, Finland - Nokia (NYSE: NOK) announced on Tuesday that it plans to acquire the outstanding shares of Symbian, which develops the operating system that runs Nokia mobile phones, that it does not already own in a deal valued at about $410 million. Under the terms, Nokia will pay EUR 3.647 per share for 52% of Symbian.

Symbian OS-based devices represented about 7% of all mobile device sales in 2007; to date, more than 200 million Symbian-based phones have been shipped, across 235 handset models from 8 vendors on more than 250 mobile networks worldwide.

Nokia also announced the development of the Symbian Foundation, along with partners AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone.

"This is a significant milestone in our software strategy" said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia.

"Symbian is already the leading open platform for mobile devices. Through this acquisition and the establishment of the Symbian Foundation, it will undisputedly be the most attractive platform for mobile innovation.

"This will drive the development of new and compelling, web-enabled applications to delight a new generation of consumers."