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Nokia is buying the 52% of Symbian that it didn’t own, and spinning off the mobile software company into a new entity called the Symbian Foundation. Sony Ericcson, Motorola and NTT DoCoMo are the other partners in a long-needed effort to reunite the various forks of the world’s most popular mobile phone operating system. AT&T, LG, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments. and Vodafone have commited themselves to the new effort. Samsung is also expected to join the foundation. See this article from the Associated Press for more information.

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Motorola announced last month that it wants to sell its mobile phone unit, which is ranked third in global market share, according to Engadget.

No one’s buying. This month, several companies including Samsung and Dell have announced that they are not interested in laying out US$9 to 12 billion for the business.

It’s a bit of a shock. The Motorola brand name is well known, and the company has remained competitive. Certainly some up-and-coming manufacturer would want that nameplate! It’s the kind of play that made sense a few years ago, when Chinese manufacturer Lenovo purchased IBM’s personal computer business, including the ThinkPad name.

Motorola executives backpedaled last week at the Mobile World Congress, announcing that the company remains committed to the mobile handset industry.

Last Monday, Microsoft purchased Danger, the developer of T-Mobile’s Sidekick line. Om Malik estimated that Microsoft paid US$500 million for a mobile handset line that has a decent market share among the under-30 crowd.

From the Register: Nokia has achieved a new milestone by posting a 40.2 percent share of the global mobile phone market.

This is a massive market, as mobile phone adoption continues to surpass personal computer sales in many regions. The estimated total shipments for 2007 was 1.13 billion mobile phones, with a 12 percent growth forecast for 2008.

Results for the fourth quarter of 2007 were as follows, according to a press release from Strategy Analytics. Figures are in millions of units:

2.3: Apple iPhone
23.7: LG
30.8: Sony Ericsson
40.9: Motorola
46.9: Samsung
133.5: Nokia