Nokia pledges support for Symbian as Foundation scales back

Overall support for Symbian may have waned in recent weeks – Sony Ericsson and Samsung notable absentees – but Nokia has claimed it isn't willing to give up on the platform it previously owned.

In a statement designed to calm fears following recent financial difficulties at the Symbian Foundation, Nokia senior VP of smartphones Jo Harlow said the Finnish firm's support had never wavered.

No nonsense Nokia

"Nokia remains committed to Symbian. The future of Symbian as a platform does not depend on the existence of the Foundation," said Harlow.

"The platform powers hundreds of millions of smartphones - including our own - and we expect to deliver ongoing support and innovation benefiting the Symbian ecosystem in the future."

Nokia has stated it will continue to invest its own resources in developing Symbian – which it claims remains the world's most widely used smartphone platform – in the coming years.

Foundation in transition

It's an important declaration for Symbian, with the Foundation today announcing a transition in its operations that will see a reduction in staff numbers.

Set to take place gradually, the Foundation is to become a legal entity responsible for licensing software, headed up by a group of non-executive directors by April 2011.

"The founding board members took a bold strategic step in setting up the foundation, which was absolutely the right decision at the time," said Symbian executive director Tim Holbrow.

"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.

"The result of this is that the current governance structure for the Symbian platform – the foundation - is no longer appropriate."

In essense, said changes within the Foundation mean control for the OS itself will - in all but name - be handed back to Nokia, with the Finnish firm confirming that its shipping commitments remain unchanged despite the upheaval.

Funding fiesta

The Foundation's transition, which Holbrow stated came as a result of a strategy review, follows a €22 million injection of funds – half of which is to come from the EU, the other half from the newly formed SYMBEOSE group, itself responsible with making the platform more interesting to stakeholders.

"I'm immensely proud of the work we've done at the Symbian Foundation," added Holbrow.

"Perhaps most notably, in the last year we've delivered the biggest open source project ever in releasing the entire Symbian codebase under an open source license, and we did it four months ahead of schedule."

Holbrow confirmed that the Symbian Foundation's leadership will work with Nokia to ensure the scaling back of operations doesn't impact on the platform's ecosystem.

Further details regarding its restructuring will be revealed at a later date.