Symbian OS is an operating system, designed for mobile devices, with associated libraries, user interface frameworks and reference implementations of common tools, produced by Symbian Ltd. It is a descendant of Psion's EPOC and runs exclusively on ARM processors.
Symbian is currently owned by Ericsson (15.6%), Nokia (47.9%), Panasonic (10.5%), Samsung (4.5%), Siemens AG (8.4%), and Sony Ericsson (13.1%). Whilst BenQ has acquired the mobile phone subsidiary of Siemens AG the Siemens AG stake in Symbian does not automatically pass to BenQ - this will need the approval of the Symbian Supervisory Board.
A common question is whether Symbian OS is "open". It is not open in the sense of Open Source software - the source code is not publicly available. However, nearly all the source code is provided to Symbian OS phone manufacturers and many other partners. Moreover, the APIs are publicly documented and anyone can develop software for Symbian OS. This contrasts with traditional embedded phone operating systems, which typically cannot accept any aftermarket software with the exception of Java applications.
Symbian is also open in terms of the Open Standards it supports.
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