Qualcomm and Fujitsu join the Symbian Foundation board

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The Symbian Foundation announced the addition of two new (and important) members to its board of directors: Qualcomm and Fujitsu.

Qualcomm joined the Symbian Foundation through its wholly owned subsidiary Qualcomm Innovation Center (QuIC), which will have the role of “optimizing open source software for use with Qualcomm technology.”

Fujitsu, which sold more than 40 million Symbian-based phones in Japan (1.2 million in Q2 2009 only), “will work with foundation members to contribute to the development of the Symbian platform and is committed to Symbian’s continued commercial success.”

Over the years, Fujitsu came with important Symbian handsets, like:

* F2051 – the first 3G phone for NTT DOCOMO’s FOMA 3G network (in 2002); * F2102 V – the first videophone (in 2003); * F900i – the first Flash-based Symbian OS phone (in 2004).

“We believe Fujitsu will continue to bring a wealth of experience in making consumer focused multimedia handsets with new user experience to the Symbian Foundation drawing on the successes of the innovative firsts Fujitsu has offered on Symbian,” declared Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation.

“The Symbian Foundation welcomes QuIC, whose membership and board participation brings us significant wireless technology expertise and whose leadership will act as an important catalyst for the growth of the Symbian ecosystem,” also said Lee Williams.

Qualcomm and Fujitsu will collaborate with the other Symbian Foundation board members, like Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Vodafone, AT&T, NTT DoCoMo, Texas Instruments and ST Microelectronics NV.

Via Press release