Nokia - No More Symbian Phones After 2012

mikejuk writes "After the decision to go with Windows Phone 7 it has been obvious that the fate of the Symbian Phone — the phone that sold more than iPhone or Android — wasn't good. However where there is life there is hope and some developers and users clung to the hope that there might be more Symbian phones in the future. Perhaps they could coexist with Nokia Windows Phone 7 devices. Now, in a open letter to developers Nokia have made it clear that they will create no more Symbian phones after 2012 and they will just wait for the old phones to fade way while trying to sell Windows Phones to the existing users."

Re:Goodbye Nokia, it was nice knowing you.

[bloodhawk]

It is a gamble, but not as much as a gamble as sticking with symbian, symbian has been dead for a while, it remains to be seen whether they jumped from the titanic to an equally doomed ship though, only time will tell. Remember even if the gamble fails they can always join the Android bandwagon, phones are rapidly replaced, if they got enough from MS for this it could well be a relatively risk free venture and you can be pretty sure regardless of what the marketing are pushing there will be backup plans and work going on in the backrooms.

Re:Goodbye Nokia, it was nice knowing you.

[Compaqt]

It wasn't about Symbian. It was about Qt, an target which would have allowed developers to program for current and future devices (and desktops).

They were trying like crazy to get people to develop for them, what with the $10 million prize and all.

Here's a recent little plea [peer360.com] from Nokia to developers:

What I can promise you is that we will not just abandon Symbian users or developers. As a very minimum, we have a legal obligation, varying in length between countries, to support users for a period of time after the last product has been sold. Our intention is that when users come to the end of the natural lifecycle of their Symbian device they will make the change to a Nokia Windows Phone device and so it would not be in our interests to undermine their Nokia smartphone experience.

Then:

All together, this means your investment in Qt is a safe choice for skill competency, monetization opportunities and brand awareness amongst our millions of users.

Yeah, right.

If I were developer, I think I'd target Android because of the numbers, and Linux-based WebOS [wikipedia.org], because it seems cool. (Inputting the Konami code [wikipedia.org] to enter dev mode? Highly geeky.)

Re:Old news, but thank God!

[dsvilko]

Am I the only one that will really miss Symbian? I am no developer but I really liked my low-end S60 smartphones. UI may not be as fancy but when it comes to functionality and performance/price ratio these were the best phones I have ever head. System-wide copy-paste, BT file transfers, WLAN tethering, true multitasking and background processes, video calls.... it had it all for ages. On-board Python interpreter with a full API access is also extremely cool feature that I believe no modern OS can match. I also had StyleTap installed and so I could run almost all of my PalmOS programs, some of which are still much better than anything that is currently available for iOS or Android. All in all, I will miss it. When I will be finally forced to switch to Android, I think I'll miss more features than I will gain by a fancy UI.

Re:The end of Nokia

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia's ex-CEO said something about wsitching to android is like peeing yourself in winter time for warmth. all I see when I look at Nokia is a giant puddle, and the urin wasn't even warm to begin with.

You have to see it in context. The "ex-CEO" was referring to Nokia, who had the strings for QT and Meego on handsets in their hands. To not develop that and instead go for a competitor's platform would be a waste of resources. Furthermore, it wasn't Nokia's ex-CEO, but the guy who Nokia's board ditched for the M$ trojan that is CEO now, even though he had been next in line. To the end he was extremely pro-Meego, i.e. pro-Open Source. When word came out that the board of directors (some say due to pressure from big American investors) chose the trojan he handed in his resignation, and thus all hope for an open handset line with Nokia hardware was crushed.