Samsung buys in to Symbian

Samsung has taken a five per cent stake in mobile operating system venture Symbian. It has paid £17m, valuing the privately-held company at £340m.

The Korean handset and electronics giant joins existing Symbian shareholders Ericsson, Matsushita, Motorola, Nokia, Psion, Siemens and Sony Ericsson. However, Samsung is known for hedging its bets, also being a licensee of competing Microsoft and Palm software.

Sang-Jin Park, senior VP and GM at Samsung Electronics Mobile Communication division, said Samsung is looking at using the Symbian OS for both its future GSM/GPRS and CDMA smart phones.

Samsung is the leading supplier of colour screen handsets in its domestic market, which has seen a healthy take up of 2.5G and 3G mobile services.

Although there are few Symbian-based handsets on the market today, backing by the mobile phone heavyweights, who have over 20 devices in development to hit the market this year, suggests the smart phone category is about to become more popular.