Nokia’s play to open source Symbian, the world’s most popular mobile phone software, could not only advance the Finnish handset maker’s portfolio strategy, but also may stimy efforts by Microsoft and Google to steal market share.

The global smartphone leader said yesterday it planned to spend $410 million to buy all of Symbian — in which it already owns a large stake — to create a new, royalty-free mobile software platform.

At the same time, it pledged to release Symbian’s mobile OS to the open source community through a new organization it created called the Symbian Foundation. (The foundation will also release Nokia’s (NYSE: NOK) S60, a five-year-old Symbian-based platform designed for its higher-end handsets.)

News of the open sourcing of the world’s leading mobile platform sent shockwaves through the fiercely competitive mobile services space, where carriers and handset manufacturers are increasingly looking to software features to set them apart from the competition.

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