Nokia to sell mobile software to rival

Mobile giant Nokia said yesterday that it would supply rival chip maker Matsushita with its smartphone software.

The deal, which will supply Matsushita with software to send emails, pictures and to play games on mobile devices, follows a May tie-up to supply software to Siemens.

The group said that Matshushita, which owns the Panasonic mobile brand, would buy the Nokia Series 60 Platform and integrate it into its Symbian OS-based multimedia phones.

Nokia's executive vice president of mobile software, Pertti Korhonen, said that he hoped Matsushita would "further develop the terminal software in the spirit of innovativeness and openness".

Both groups own a stake in the Symbian handheld group. This deal is consequently being seen by analysts as a further example of mobile groups working together to cut overheads in a time when many have been hit by the slowdown in the telecommunications industry.