Several months back, a research study showed that Nokia and Symbian were on the decline. Public interest in Nokia handsets and the Symbian operating system was waning and that was not good news for the Finnish phone maker and the operating system developer –after all, Nokia holds the top spot as the world’s largest mobile phone maker, and the Symbian OS was the main platform of choice for Nokia.
In fact, Nokia and Symbian have been industry partners for so long that it came to no surprise that Nokia bought out Symbian back in 2008, turning it into the nonprofit Symbian Foundation.
However, time seemed to be changing –for a while at least. Following the lack of market demand for Symbian products, Sony Ericsson and Samsung have announced that they would no longer produce handsets that make use of the Symbian OS. With the growth of the Android operating system (and many predictions that it would soon overcome Symbian’s numbers), this was not surprising. Nokia on the other hand, has announced that it will continue supporting the Symbian OS –though it is also working on a new platform with Intel, the MeeGo OS.
At this point, upcoming Symbian devices have drawn very little excitement from people -particularly with the Nokia N8 which was delayed for several months. But a recent change has brought new life to the Foundation: an announcement from the EU Commission that a 22 million Euro fund will be granted to Symbian’s developers in order to lead the development of the SYMBOESE.
Just a while back, Nokia has confirmed that they are changing the Symbian Foundation from a nonprofit organization and are turning it into a licensing organization. While specific details on the SYMBOESE are not yet confirmed, many believe that this will heavily influence the development of the Symbian^4. Of course, support for Nokia’s mobiles will continue as evidenced by the recent launch of the Nokia E7 Symbian^3 smart phone.
|
|
|
|
|
|