HELSINKI, FINLAND: Symbian, the world's most popular smartphone operating system, is betting on giving its software free to developers and on including "Qt" technology in its system to stem its loss of market share.

Symbian is fighting to defend its leading position in the smartphone market against new rivals from Apple Inc, Research In Motion Ltd and Google Inc.

To better compete, Symbian will include Qt technology which enables software developers to create one application for different operating systems in a version next year.

"The first Qt product can then hit the market at the end of 2010, but you will see devices hitting the market at full power in 2011," Lee Williams, chief of the Symbian Foundation, told Reuters in an interview.

Analyst Carolina Milanesi at market research firm Gartner said this would give time for rivals to win more ground from Symbian, so far used by all smartphones of cellphone market leader Nokia Oyj.

"The timing could be enough if the devices are very compelling, but by then you will have Maemo as well as the second wave of Android coming through, as well as whatever trick Apple has up its sleeve," she said.

Currently mobile software developers have to make many different versions of applications, multiplying their cost, and putting the lid on the market growth.

The adoption of Qt technology is seen as crucial for Nokia to gain ground in the higher end of the market, where it -- and Symbian -- has lost ground to Apple, RIM and Google's Android.

To expand its options in the top end of the handset market, Nokia is starting to use Maemo software, its version of Linux. Maemo is also supporting Qt.

Nokia bought out other shareholders of Symbian last year and gave all its software to an independent foundation, which will develop it on an open-source basis, meaning all members can freely use and adapt the code.

Smartphones are seen as a bright spot in the shrinking cellphone market this year and Williams said he was more optimistic than he was in May when he forecast the market would grow 12 to 15 percent this year.

"If anything, the market may grow a little more," he said.

Abhijit Kabra, who leads the embedded software business and technology initiatives at consultancy Accenture, said he expects smartphone market growth to continue "more or less as we have seen", boosted by increasing use of multimedia.

Earlier this month Accenture bought from Nokia a unit providing customer support and services for Symbian.