The register informs that Nokia is said to be hastening the demise of its Symbian platform, cancelling the development of all but one new Symbian-based device. Although Nokia Belle updates will continue to ship to existing customers, only one new model – a successor to the N8 high-end camera phone – will reach the market, the Register understands.
Though in support of this register has not presented any solid source. From the article it seems, they are basing this news on two announcements,
- Last month Nokia admitted sales of Symbian devices were falling faster than it expected. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop blamed this on changing market conditions, specifically the demand for lower cost smartphones. “We now believe that we will sell fewer Symbian devices than we previously anticipated,” said Elop.
- Key silicon partner ST Ericsson already hinted at the news when giving investors guidance last week. ST Ericsson said that a “very significant decline” in net sales this quarter was to be expected was due in part to the “reduction, in the short term, of new product sales with one of our largest customers.”
Now coming to good part of news of the N8 successor, it seems that this will obviously ship with Carla, which is confirmed by testing done for Carla by Nokia. Also Carla seems to be compatible with current crop of devices, hence regardless of what register assumes all the devices are due for one more update after Belle.
Still we believe that Nokia will not ditch Symbian at a time when,
- For the first time, It has got kind of software performance and UI in Belle which earlier iterations of Symbian lacked.
- For last two quarters Q3 and Q4 2011 Symbian has held very well and even posted a slight quarter on quarter growth in Q4. Read our analysis here.
- For the year 2011 even after all negativity and infamous Elop’s memo, Symbian is responsible for ( 96%) 74 million out of 77 million of Nokia’s smartphone sales.
- Nokia ‘s sales will suffer a lot and it is very tough for Lumias to fill in the big shoes of Symbian. Also there is no guarantee that all the Symbian user base will shift to windows phone platform, which is so different and lacks customisation like Symbian. Read more about this in our article here.
