Chinese telecom manufacturer Huawei has announced plans to join the non-profit organization Symbian Foundation, which is run by Nokia, along with nine other companies, including the British chip designer ARM and the credit card giant Visa, to gain free access to the Symbian mobile phone operating system software provided by Nokia.

In addition to the mobile phone operating system, Huawei will be able to enter the open platform jointly developed by the mobile phone enterprises, operators and chip manufacturers in the organization by joining Symbian Foundation.

The open platform is viewed as Nokia's major strategy to attract the support of other companies to fight against Microsoft and Google's nibble of the mobile phone operating system market. According to the statistics published by Symbian Foundation, since Nokia acquired Symbian in June 2008 and announced plans to open its Symbian mobile phone operating system for free, 52 companies have joined the organization, which enhanced Nokia's leading position in the mobile phone operating system sector.

Symbian is one of the world's leading mobile operating systems. Founded in 1998 by Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola and Psion, Symbian has grown into one of the most visible technological successes with over 200 million handsets shipped to date.