In the face of stiff competition from the freely available and wildly popular Android software, the Symbian Foundation has had no choice but to follow Google's example.

It has announced that its open source migration project is now complete and that the Symbian platform called Symbian 3 is 100% open.

Symbian software is currently used in more than 330 million phones around the world.

The not-for-profit consortium which is mainly backed by Nokia ,the biggest maker of Symbian phones, said all 108 packages were freely available under the Eclipse licence and other open source licences. It has also promised transparency on all its future plans for the platform.

The code can be downloaded at: http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Platform_Opening

The full code disclosure is intended to stimulate more interest in Symbian phones especially in North America where it has never really caught on.

The phones are generally viewed as lagging behind when it comes to state of the art features found in other sophisticated touch screen phones like Apple's iPhone. Developers can now get their hands on the entire code and help advance the Symbian ecosystem.

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