Nokia today said it is offering to buy the 52 percent of Symbian, the consortium that makes the software for its phones. Nokia plans to make it available for free to other manufacturers, in hopes of blunting the influence of competing software providers.

Nokia will then establish a foundation with Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo to make the software available royalty-free. Symbian previously licensed its software for royalties. They will combine their three different versions of the Symbian software for advanced, data-enabled phones into one open platform.

AT&T, LG, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone will also join the foundation.

Nokia said it expects the acquisition to be completed during the fourth quarter of 2008 and is subject to regulatory approval.

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