Symbian will now be available as an open source platform to the users. Any individual or organization can now take, use and modify the code for any purpose, whether for a mobile device or another piece of kit.

Lee Williams, the Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation, said, "The development community is now empowered to shape the future of the mobile industry, and rapid innovation on a global scale will be the result. When the Symbian Foundation was created, we set the target of completing the open source release of the platform by mid-2010 and it's because of the extraordinary commitment and dedication from our staff and our member companies that we've reached it well ahead of schedule".

All the 108 packages that contain the source code of the Symbian platform can now be downloaded from Symbian's developer website, under a public license. The complete development kits for creating applications and mobile devices can also be downloaded easily.

It looks forward to speed up the development of new and innovative devices, which shall help the platform to survive with competitors like Apple and Android.

But handset manufacturers from LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson have their own proprietary operating systems. So, the competition gets tougher.