The Symbian Foundation announced over the weekend that Borqs, Comarch, HiQ, Kanrikougaku Kenkyusho Ltd. (K3), L&T Infotech, Renesas Technology Corp. and SoftBank Mobile Corp. have joined its ranks prior to a meeting in Tokyo, Japan.
Softbank is Japan's third-largest mobile carrier.
The seven new members bring to 59 the number of groups supporting The Symbian Foundation.
The Nokia-led group claims that the Symbian OS is now used in 150 countries in over 50 languages.
The Symbian Foundation hopes to release a completely-new, open-source and royalty-free Symbian platform by 2010.
Other alliance members include: phone and device makers Fujitsui, Huawei, LG, Samsung, Sharp, SonyEricsson; and network operators 3, America Movil, AT&T, KTF, Orange, NTT DoCoMo, T-Mobile, Tim and Vodafone.


