Nokia to Return to Symbian Development, Foundation Now Responsible for Licensing

Following last week’s announcement that the Symbian Foundation would receive funding to continue development under the SYMBEOSE consortium, the Symbian Foundation has announced that development of the smartphone platform will return under the direct control of Nokia beginning end of March 2011 under a different open source model than the one currently in use.

The Symbian Foundation will heretofore assume control of operating system and trademark licensing with the completion of the transition expected in April 2011 under a group of non-executive directors. With the administrative changes, Nokia is now able to make more direct changes to Symbian and is able to tailor it directly for its device lineup once again, which is the degree of control it initially lost when it spun off Symbian in 2008 in a bid to compete with Android and iPhone.