Finnish handset maker Nokia is hopeful of winning back the market share by making the Symbian platform that was employed in its high-end mobile phones, open source, in a bid to encourage internet developers to develop innovative applications on the platform.

In June this year, Nokia bought out the shares of Symbian foundation from its partners in a $410 million acquisition, to make the operating system royalty-free from the first half of 2009.

Nokia has sold more than 180 million smartphones with Symbian technology with the platform’s most successful interface, S60. 

But increasing competition in smartphone technology from Google, Apple and RIM has resulted in loss of its market share. Nokia has lost market share due increased competition.

The freely available Symbian operating system to be controlled by an independent non-profit foundation will be headed by Lee Williams as the executive director.

The first Symbian Foundation software will be released next year, and Nokia hopes to produce a completely new platform by June 2010.