Symbian to marry Google's Android

Bangalore: Nokia's open source mobile platform Symbian is just getting bigger. It will merge with Android, Google's mobile device platform, which is also based on open source, to facilitate a single but larger open source operating system.

Analysts at J. Gold Associates say, "The merger will take place sometime in the near future, say three to six months."

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The move is considered unexpected as Android was about to launch its devices in late 2008, and Nokia announced in June that it would be moving Symbian towards open source, giving no clue of the two companies having any formal relationship that would come close to such a collaboration.

"But this is happening," says J. Gold, because "A combination of the Android and Symbian efforts would be good for the industry, good for Google and good for Symbian." And a handful of similar mergers are in the offing that includes Linksys and Belkin, Red Hat and Ubuntu, and Engadget and Gizmodo.

In June Nokia bought Symbian, paving the way for an open-source Symbian environment. But since Symbian's code was destined to be accessed only by the Symbian Foundation, the software maker had announced that it was open to collaborate with Google and its Linux-based Android mobile operating system.