In what many members of the press are calling Nokia’s attempt to counter Google’s Android, Nokia today made an offer on Symbian stock.  Nokia currently owns 48% of Symbian and plans to buy the remaining stock holders out.  At last report, almost 91% of Symbian stockholders agreed to the deal.

Nokia has also created Symbian foundation, which may mean more open Symbian.

Symbian is described as “the world’s dominant smartphone operating system (206 million phones shipped, 18.5 million in Q1 2008)” (Source: Electronic Times).

If the deal proceeds as anticipated, the Symbian Foundation says that some components of Symbian will be made available under the Eclipse Public License (EPL) 1.0 as open source with the rest of the OS to follow in subsequent years.

Does this mean more free, downloadable open source applications for Nokia’s N78? Only time will tell but if it does, you’ll find it on nokia-n78.com first!