SEOUL, March 10 (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co appears to be looking to lure engineers from Nokia, as the Finnish firm plans to abandon its own Symbian platform in a bold move to revive its struggling smartphone business.
Nokia, the world's largest handset maker, said last month that it would replace Symbian with Microsoft's Windows Phone over the coming two years to challenge fast growing smartphone vendors such as Apple and Google's Android phones.
It said on Wednesday it would start talks with Finnish employees over its new strategy, which unions fear could cost more than 5,000 jobs in the Nordic country.
"If you are a Symbian developer unhappy about Nokia's recent announcements, and are hence looking for a new platform to showcase your talents, we say "Hello!" and "welcome to bada (operating system)," said a newsletter posted by a Samsung developer on the Internet and quoted in online media.
"If you're new to the bada development, or are moving your app from Symbian, we'd like to welcome you."
Samsung, the world's No.2 handset maker, confirmed the newsletter but said it was not an official company statement.
"There have been no orders from our Mobile Solution Center to initiate strategic hiring from Nokia, and the newsletter was simply sent by our event organiser in India to a group of engineers who showed up at our bada developers' conference there earlier this month," a Samsung spokesman said.
Bada, which means ocean in Korea, is Samsung's proprietary operating system targetting the low to mid-ranged smartphone market. Samsung, the most aggressive Android phone producer, is pushing the Galaxy S smartphone in the high end of the market to challenge Apple's iPhone.
The platform is at the heart of Samsung's drive to sharply boost its smartphone market share, develop new revenue sources from its own Samsung App store, and create synergies with other areas such as its TV business, ranked the world's largest.
(Reporting by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Jonathan Hopfner)