Nokia takes back control of Symbian

Nokia said on Monday it would take full control of the Symbian operating system, which it had given to the open source community to run only a few years ago.

Nokia will take care of Symbian platform development from April 2011 onwards, while the cross-industry Symbian Foundation will in the future take care of only licensing of the software.

"This comes as little surprise. As other licensees have abandoned Symbian, Nokia had little option but to take full control," said Ben Wood, head of research at CCS Insight.

This year Samsung Electronics and Sony Ericsson have abandoned usage of Symbian software.

Symbian continues to lead the mobile market with a 37 percent share in the third quarter, but this is well down on levels just two years ago.

Its closest rival, Google's Android, had 17 percent of the market last quarter, just ahead of Apple, according to research firm Canalys.

(Reporting by Tarmo Virki; Editing by David Holmes)