Nokia to acquire Psion plc's shares in Symbian

Nokia to acquire Psion plc's shares in Symbian "Nokia today announced that it has started the process of enabling the transfer of Psion's shares in Symbian to Nokia. Symbian, owned by a core group of mobile industry players with its independent governance structure, will continue to pursue its fair and non-discriminatory licensing business of the standards-based Symbian operating system (OS).
Continued innovation in services, applications and handsets is required for the growth in the mobile industry. This requires that all parties have the ability to differentiate and add value to their products and services while maintaining end-to-end interoperability. As a founder and shareholder, Nokia is determined to make further investment to support Symbian's long-term success in the increasingly competitive wireless OS market. The decision to acquire Psion's shares in Symbian is based on Nokia's confidence in the Symbian OS as a core platform technology for advanced mobile devices.
The value of the transaction will derive from two parts. A fixed portion of £93.5 million (137.1 MEUR), and a variable payment of £0.84 (1.23 EUR) from Nokia to Psion for each Symbian OS device sold during 2004 and 2005. Upon completion of the transaction, Nokia estimates that its share in Symbian will increase from the current 32.2% up to approximately 63.3%."

That must be comforting to all of Nokia's competitors that are also building Symbian devices; I suspect a few are revisiting Windows Mobile.