Samsung Electronics, one of the world's top five mobile-phone makers, has signed a licensing deal to use the Symbian operating system in smart phones for 2.5G and third-generation (3G) networks.
Samsung's first Symbian OS product will be a global data-enabled phone using Nokia's Series 60 user interface.
The deal means all of the world's top five mobile-phone manufacturers are now Symbian OS licensees.
Symbian licensees accounted for more than 80 per cent of worldwide mobile-phone sales, as of this year's second quarter.
Archrival Microsoft is expected to take the wraps off a made-in-Taiwan 3G phone featuring its Smartphone operating system today, several weeks ahead of Symbian.
Two Symbian phones are due to be launched soon, one by Nokia and one by Sony Ericsson, while at least 14 others are in development. Sony Ericsson is expected to be the first in the Symbian camp to launch a camera smart phone, the already overdue P800.
While Symbian has a much broader base of licensees than Microsoft, the world's largest software maker has powerful access to the corporate market, and its Windows CE operating system has made headway in corporations partly because the devices are made by major personal computer companies such as Hewlett-Packard.