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In fact Nokia may have now switched the balance of power from proprietary to open-source mobile phone software by buying the remainder of the Symbian operating system software concern and spinning out the assets under an open-source license, according to a report in eweek.com.

But, the report notes that the reality is that while Nokia rules the mobile phone roost overseas, it is struggling in North America compared with offerings such asApple's iPhone, and Research In Motion's BlackBerry.
So Nokia is moving in step with the open-source platforms such as Google's Android and the joins the open-source side, a group that claims at least, to be the lesser of two evils.

But, says eweek,  "the mobile open-source world is still young and there is too much fragmentation. The Android effort has yet to produce an actual phone users can access. LiMo and the Open Handset Alliance that supports Android are warily circling each other. The LiPS (Linux Phone Standards) Forum just joined LiMo".

According to the report, Nokia "will sell open-source smart phones, Internet services and advertising at a far lesser cost. With Symbian, Nokia owns the complete open-source platform: hardware, software and services and now that Nokia has unified its offerings, it will need to bear down on its Internet services portfolio, where it lags behind Google, Yahoo and others".

Although Nokia has the advantage of completely having its own pet mobile platform, if it doesn't move fast with speed, Google will grab the bulk of that online advertising market, which IDC predicted will reach $US106 billion by 2011.