Samsung is leaning a little closer to the smartphone consortium Symbian, we learn from a press release issued by the two companies today. Samsung is Microsoft's most prestigious phone OS licensee – although that's a very small club – while Symbian is the big handset manufacturers' "anyone but Microsoft" gang, heavily backed by the Japanese consumer electronics giants.

Samsung is big enough to hedge its bets: it has produced a PalmOS smartphone and is set to debut a phone based on the "Stinker" (née Microsoft Smartphone 2002) platform in the US, any day now.

But its Symbian development looks more extensive than previously disclosed. The release confirms what we already know, that Samsung is a licensee of SymbianOS and Nokia's Series 60 UI: which we exclusively revealed here back in March. Samsung verbally confirmed the news at CeBIT, and Nokia confirmed it in July.

Samsung says its first Symbian phone will be a global (presumably, this means triband GSM/GPRS) device with 3G products to follow.

Siemens and Matsushita have also licensed the Series 60 UI from Nokia. ®

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