Symbian Foundation recruits more supporters

Bank and social network joins its buddy list

The Symbian Foundation has bolstered its buddies list and can now boast 78 supporters.

The not-for-profit organisation - which has been set up to unify Symbian, S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) software; and administer, oversee and develop the resulting Symbian mobile OS in its altered open source state - has added a further 14 voices of support to its endeavour. These include Bank of America, HP, MySpace, Qualcomm and SanDisk.

Douglas Brown, SVP, mobile product development at Bank of America, said the open sourced Symbian platform will enable the bank to offer more value added services to its two million active mobile banking customers. Financial services company Visa has previously signed up as a Symbian follower.

The 78 Foundation supporters include mobile makers, software and services companies, network operators and chipmakers. Rival Open Handset Alliance - which backs Google's Android open mobile OS - currently counts 47 members from across the mobile ecosystem.