Nokia is buying Symbian, a company that makes operating systems for mobile phones. Nokia already uses Symbian software in its smartphones, so the move isn't a huge surprise. But in an unexpected twist, Nokia is going to make Symbian open and royalty-free for software developers. In doing so the company is clearly going after Google for the future of mobile phone systems.
Nokia was already paying Symbian some $250 million a year to use Symbian's software in phones, analysts say. So buying Symbian outright for $410 million is smart business. Nokia shares were up slightly in morning trading to $24.48, and Google shares are down just slightly to $543.36.
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