Ever since Psion announced a deal in February to sell its 31.1% shareholding in Symbian to Nokia for 135.7m pounds ($252.1m), there have been rumblings of discontent from other members of the consortium.
One of the major forces behind the alliance was to ensure that Microsoft did not gain the same dominating grip on mobile computing as it has on the desktop. So the prospect of handset market leader Nokia increasing its Symbian stake to 63.3% looked uncomfortably like replacing one dominating company for another – even if Nokia would need 70% to exercise control over Symbian.
Ericsson chief executive Carl-Hendric Svanberg told the Financial Times that Nokia should get a holding below 50% otherwise it becomes a Nokia platform.
If that happens there will be a gradual deterioration in the view of Symbian and other platforms could start to materialize.
Rudi Lamprecht, head of Siemens’ mobile unit has already said: Nokia taking over 60% is not something we like very much. We believe in a more equal footing.
However the other shareholders have always had the right under the agreement under which Symbian was established to buy a portion of any shares offered for sale in accordance with their existing holding. If all took this course it would keep Nokia’s stake down to 46.7%. Other Symbian shareholders are Ericsson (17.5%), Panasonic (7.9%), Samsung (5%), Siemens (4.8%), and Sony Ericsson (1.5%).
The question now is how many will follow Ericsson which will increase its holding to 27.6% when it acquires the Psion shares.
This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire
