Nokia says experience counts in Google challenge

By Tarmo Virki

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia is well prepared for Google's high-profile foray into the mobile phone business thanks to years of development experience and millions of phones on the market, a senior Nokia official told Reuters.

Details of Google's plan to enter the mobile software market are expected on Tuesday when T-Mobile USA displays the first phone based on Google's Android platform in New York, sources familiar with the plan have said.

In response to Google's impending entry into the market, world's top cellphone maker Nokia said in June it would buy out the remaining shareholders of UK-based smartphone software maker Symbian for $410 million, then give the software to not-for-profit organisation and make it royalty-free.

"I think that the fact there is a mature platform that is being introduced in an open source environment kind of changes the game," said David Rivas, head of technology management at Nokia's S60 business, the platform that runs on Symbian.

"The choices up until then were: You could go with proprietary and mature, or you could go with immature and free. Now there is a choice that is free and mature," Rivas said.

Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and others will contribute assets to the not-for-profit Symbian Foundation, which unites handset makers, network operators and communications chipmakers to create an open-source platform.

Rivas pointed to the 226 million Symbian phones that had been sold by end-June, saying they gave Symbian an advantage over the new platforms of Google and Apple.

"All developers tend at the end of the day to look for something that has impact in the context of volume," Rivas said.