Nokia is to buy out shareholders in Symbian, the UK-based mobile phone software developer, and create a free mobile phone operating system.

The Finnish mobile handset giant said yesterday, on the tenth anniversary of Symbian's launch, that it would pay €264million (£209million) for the 52.1 per cent of Symbian it did not own, buying out Sony Ericsson, Ericsson, Panasonic, Siemens and Samsung.

In addition, Nokia is joining forces with other technology and telecoms heavyweights to create one free, open mobile software platform.

Board members of the new Symbian Foundation include the operators Vodafone, AT&T and NTT DoCoMo; the four biggest handset makers after Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics; and the microchip makers Texas Instruments and ST Microelectronics.

The move is a response to the growing threat from groups such as Google, which is developing Android, an open platform for mobile phones, as well as Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, and Apple, which are gaining market share.

The news will also put pressure on Microsoft, which charges between $8 (£4) and $15 a handset for its Windows Mobile operating system.

The Symbian OS is the world's leading smartphone software platform, with more than 200 million devices sold, equivalent to almost two thirds of the market for smartphones, which can send e-mails and access the internet. It has 7percent of the overall mobile handset market.

Symbian was created by Psion, the British software developer, which sold its stake to Nokia in 2004.

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