On Tuesday, Nokia made a cash offer to acquire the 52 percent of Symbian it doesn’t already own. Nokia is willing to pay $410 million for the mobile-platform software found on most cell phones today.

The acquisition is a fundamental step in establishing the Symbian Foundation, which Nokia additionally announced Tuesday along with AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, and Vodafone.

Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia, called the acquisition and the foundation significant milestones in the firm’s software strategy.

“Symbian is already the leading open platform for mobile devices,” Kallasvuo said. “Through that acquisition and the establishment of the Symbian Foundation, it will undisputedly be the most appealing platform for mobile innovation. that will drive the development of new and compelling Web-enabled applications to delight a new generation of consumers.”

Nokia Targets Microsoft, Google and Apple

According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, the creation of the Symbian Foundation will be

good for Nokia but poor news for Google’s Android and Microsoft.

Neil Mawston, director of Strategy Analytics, expects Nokia to use royalty-free Symbian software as a loss leader to drive growth in handsets and services in 2009.

“This is a good move for Nokia, considering cheaper smartphones for the mass market will eventually drive higher global volumes of Nokia devices and [Nokia’s] Ovi substance,” Mawston said.

Bonny Joy, an analyst at Strategy Analytics, said a lower cost for the Symbian operating system is poor news for license-based rivals, such as Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. The change will impact Android on volume and Microsoft on value.

“Symbian will match Android on zero-dollar pricing, and that diminishes one of its major competitive advantages,” Joy said. “For Microsoft, the pressure will surely mount to cut the price of its license fees for handset vendors, which we estimate to be a…

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