Symbian OS

Symbian OS is an operating system specifically designed to be implemented in smartphones. Although the operating system is developed and licensed by Symbian, Ltd., system developer kits (SDKs) are available for users to create and modify applications within the Symbian OS.

In 2009, Symbian devices accounted for the operating system on 47 percent of the world's smart phones, making it the world's most popular by a wide stretch. Symbian's primary competitors are Research in Motion, the iPhone OS, and Microsoft Windows Mobile, and Linux, but combined the four don't match Symbian's market share. http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1306513

Symbian OS was originally developed by Psion (in partnership with Ericsson, Motorola, and Nokia), a computer company founded by David Potter, a British academic, in 1980.http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-53153886.html http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/historyofpsion.htm It has gone through many phases over the course of its lifetime, the most recent model being the fully open-source Symbian^3.

On June 24, 2008, Nokia announced plans to purchase all remaining shares in Symbian, Ltd. The deal reportedly cost about $140 million. Nokia also announced that they would be making the Symbian OS open source, which has led many to speculate that Nokia seeks to compete with Google's Android operating system.Engadget: Nokea buys Symbian, turns software over to Symbian Foundation (June 24, 2008)

The first post-merger version was called Symbian^1, which was released in 2009 and was not fully open source.http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Symbian%5E1 The first fully open source version of Symbian OS was Symbian^3, which was released in February of 2010.http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Symbian%5E3