The mobile world is moving faster than ever. Less than two weeks after publishing my assessment that the primary barriers to widespread LBS adoption are being overcome, Nokia have added spring to their steps by doing exactly what I had hoped. They’ve acknowledged that they intend to fully acquire UK mobile OS vendor Symbian and will make the OS freely available to their partners in direct competition to the iPhone and Google’s upcoming Android.

This three horse race is going to be interesting. As I’ve said before, Nokia have been caught sleeping and it will still take some effort to move the Symbian derivatives currently on the market back into a unified platform. Whether the work required to do this and to release new handsets will happen fast enough to maintain developer interest is the new question.

I’ll have to re-consider my bets for the race now. Having previously put Nokia last out of the three, I’d say they’ve moved up into second spot with Apple still ahead by a few lengths.