Not long ago I worked for a company called Iroquois, whose name came from a super league of Native Indian tribes. When these individual, but rival, clans faced a collective enemy, they put aside their differences and group hugged to increase their powers for the big scrap. I can’t help but think of this following today’s Symbian Foundation announcement.

Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Samsung et al have obviously been properly spooked by the emergence of Google, its Android OS and the formation of the (Rebel) Open Handset Alliance.

By combining forces to create one universal open source Symbian platform where the party’s already started, the beer and food are free and everyone is invited is the obvious cheeky comeback to pre-empt the Android attack. Google has put a rocket up the jacksy of the mobile industry and for that we should reluctantly doff our cap.

But, normally, such a cartel of marquee names would stink of corporate press-ganging. For once the hippy style love-in from the premier mobile players should be seen as a positive move that will only benefit us, the punters. For a while now, we’ve been shackled by Symbian’s variant incompatible OS tentacles stretching from (our favourite) Nokia S60 smartphones to Sony Ericsson’s and Motorola’s UIQ handsets. Now, from 2010, Symbian users can finally enjoy one platform where software and applications work on every flavour of phone in joyous teach-the-world-to sing harmony.

The creation of this open source Symbian ‘ecosystem’ also means it’s ripe for a deluge of software and apps to be designed, giving developers of all backgrounds, shapes and sizes carte blanche to get creative.

Symbian has always had an expansive neighbourly developer community but now this will grow to small island proportions (Geek Islands, anyone?). And while the announcement of the Symbian Foundation being a royalty free non-profit organisation might raise Roger Moore-size eyebrows, surely this can only be a good thing.

Will the Foundation be seen as the school bully, setting upon its smaller mobile rivals (Microsoft, Apple and Linux), punching them in the stomach and nicking their lunch money?

Symbian is already fattening up nicely, scoffing 60 per cent of the mobile OS flan, with Microsoft and the boys from Cupertino nibbling smaller 11 and 4 per cent portions. Leaving Linux barely ripe for seconds, with it’s Microsoft-equalling 11 per cent.

This clearly shows off Symbian’s popularity and if anyone is shooting to become the de facto mobile platform then Symbian’s gun is well and truly loaded. Factor in the bolstering that happened today and we could be in for one tasty scrap. Clan-style.