For full background, here's our original news story announcing SYMBEOSE, from November 2010.
SYMBEOSE, which stands for 'Symbian – the Embedded Operating System for Europe', is a consortium of organisations from a range of areas: devices and chipset manufacturers (ST Ericsson and Nokia), Technology Consultancies, Software Component Manufacturers, Commercial R&D and Academic R&D.
It is important to note that SYMBEOSE is not related to the future of the Symbian Foundation itself. It is not an alternative organisation to the Symbian Foundation, or a replacement source of funding. Rather it is an ecosystem wide research and development project, framed as an EC technology framework project, which has been put together under the leadership of the Symbian Foundation, as part of its role as the non-profit organisation responsible for guiding the open source Symbian platform.
The Symbian Foundation is leading the project and will receive about €1 to 2 million in funding to help organise, shape and direct research and development efforts. The remaining €20 million will be shared among the other 23 organisations involved in the project. Half of the funding comes from the EC Commission, through the Joint Technology Initiative's Artemis programme. Matching funds are provided by commercial organisations (usually those within the projects).
Via All About Phones:
(translated) The European Union, which in November announced a grant of 22 million euros in the Symbian mobile operating system from Nokia, has never paid that money. The project was named SYMBEOSE and was to be based on the Symbian mobile operating system - and would have its wings blooming outside the world of smartphones and tablets.
The aim was a kind of pan-European embedded OS. 'European', because Symbian was attached to (the Finnish) Nokia.