Samsung agrees to Nokia’s Symbian takeover

Nokia has confirmed that fellow Symbian shareholder Samsung has agreed to sell its stake to the Finnish phone maker, paving the way for completion of Nokia's audacious takeover of the software platform.

The surprise move was announced back in June, when Nokia revealed it had agreed to buy the 52 per cent of the Symbian consortium it didn't already own, with a view to taking full ownership of the platform, unifying the various skews of Symbian in circulation and eventually making the platform open source.

The $410 million (228 million) investment by Nokia to take full control of Symbian will enable both the company and the platform to compete against the threat of new competition in the smartphone software market from Apple's iPhone OS and Google's Android.

"They (Samsung) have accepted it," Nokia spokesman said referring to the buyout offer.

Symbian grew out of the Epoc mobile device operating system originally developed by British firm Psion. Psion went on to be one of the founder members of the Symbian group, before eventually selling its stake and concentrating on making industrial handheld devices.