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Will Nokia Dump Symbian for Android? Um, No.

by John Paczkowski
Posted on July 6, 2009 at 5:20 AM PT

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nokia_androidNokia will not debut a new Android-based handset at its annual Nokia World conference in early September because the company has no new Android-based handset to debut.

That’s the word from Nokia, which vehemently denied reports this morning that it is just months away from launching its first mobile phone based on Google’s mobile OS. “There is no truth to this story whatsoever,” the company said in a statement. “It is a well known fact that Symbian is our platform of choice for smartphones.”

Indeed. It was a just a little over a year ago that Nokia (NOK) invested some $410 million in the platform, establishing the Symbian Foundation and releasing the Symbian OS as a royalty-free open mobile platform. It seems unlikely that the company would jeopardize that effort by rolling out an Android touchscreen phone at its annual conference. Even more unlikely when you consider that Symbian is by far the world’s leading smartphone software platform. It might not have as much buzz as Google’s (GOOG) Android or Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone 3.0 or Palm’s (PALM) new webOS, but Symbian still claims 47 percent of the mobile OS market.

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  • Stewart Midwinter
    I think this "rumour" was a trial balloon by someone at Nokia. Judging by some of the excited discussion it's provoked, the trial balloon has proved its purpose, which is: to demonstrate how unappealing Symbian OS and its apps are compared to Android and its apps.

    For those who want their smartphone to be an always-connected link to the 'net, Symbian OS just doesn't cut it.

    Many observers have characterized the touchscreen implementation of Symbian as awkward and kludgy, and I'd agree with them. I own a Nokia 5800 and an iPod Touch, and the Apple device is far easier to use.

    Further, there's just so much more you can do with the Apple device because of the massive number of apps (even if 80% are games or joke apps). Android comes second in apps, and Nokia... way behind.

    If Nokia dumped Symbian today and only released Android phones, the number of apps available to its users would taken a sudden jump upward. Nokia's been selling bazillions of phones for years, and using Symbian all that time... where are the apps? How is that there are more useful touchscreen apps for Android which has been around less than a year, on only one device?

    Don't get me wrong, Nokia makes great hardware, but Symbian OS and its apps bears a striking resemblance to OS/2 Warp.. and we all know know what happened to that.
  • Fred Hamranhansenhansen
    It's great for Nokia to go their own way. But they have to measure their software stack against Apple's and Symbian doesn't cut it.

    Nokia could be making notebook PC's also. They are leaving so much money on the table by thinking small.
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About John

John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »

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