Symbian OS is an open operating system, designed for mobile devices, with associated libraries, user interface frameworks and reference implementations of common tools, produced by Symbian Ltd. It is a descendant of Psion's EPOC and runs exclusively on ARM processors.
On 24 June 1998, Symbian Ltd. was formed as a partnership between Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola and Psion, to exploit the convergence between PDAs and mobile phones. Symbian was previously owned by Nokia (56.3%), Ericsson (15.6%), Sony Ericsson (13.1%), Panasonic (10.5%) and Samsung (4.5%). Ten years to the day later, on 24 June 2008, Nokia announced that they intended to acquire all shares that they did not already own. The acquisition was of €264 million, or $410 million.
On 24 June 2008 the Symbian Foundation was announced with the aim to "provide royalty-free software and accelerate innovation".
Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian_OS
