Rumor: Nokia Dropping Symbian Also For The E Series
We just recently reported that all high-end N series multimedia devices will be running the Linux OS by 2012, even though X series and E series devices will continue to run Symbian OS. We also predicted that Nokia will dumb Symbian altogether before long.
Now it seems like that's happening sooner than we thought or Nokia wants to admit. Our source tells us that a contact at Nokia's legal department unofficially affirmed that Nokia will also drop Symbian for the E Series enterprise range. This is no doubt a rumor, but we are pretty confident this could be true. Here's why.
Nokia, just as the rest as us, are seeing increasingly that the smart phone is not only for the early adopter or the affluent consumer, but is actually becoming 'the people's phone' in the developed world. Nothing tells this story better than seeing iPhone coming to Tesco in UK (via TechCrunch). At the same time, even though N900 might be hyped, it is very geeky even compared to the Android phones coming out, let alone the intuitive bliss of iPhone (see the video below by Engadget).
Even though the subsequent N Series phones would be slightly less geeky and more directed towards the mainstream, they will not carry to business users in real volumes as E Series would do. At the same time, if iPhone goes for Tesco, it's a smart move to upgrade the business people to Maemo before they get their IT department to get them what the rest of the market already has, namely a decent mobile OS. Now it seems that Nokia wants to hold back just a little bit more to make sure Maemo will not collapse under it when it hits the market inside the N900 before shifting the important E series on the new platform.
Nokia might very well keep Symbian for the low end phones for a quite a while, and even announce producing development tools that will work across the two , but it really is a sea change inside the company on how the view the market if E Series goes Maemo. We all knew this would happen, we just didn't know it would happen so fast.
5 Comments
Add your comment
ville,the newN900 is a disappointment, in my opinion. I was playing with one a few weeks ago, and as a smart phone, it is not a patch on the i Phone, and
as a Linux tablet, it lacks the nicer form factor of the older devices.Symbian is not the way to go.in fact smart phone manufacturers are even planning to make phones for market currently being occupied by common phones.the issue with Nokia it lacks faith with homegrown talent and ideas and thats why its competitors are making inroads to its originally guaranteed market.
Well there is Qt already released which is development environment for Symbian, Maemo, Windows, Linux etc. so basically you don't develop anymore for Symbian or Maemo but you develop for Qt. This is not write once, run everywhere bullshit like Java but it makes really easy to provide your app for higher and lower end devices.
Next version of Maemo will be based on Qt completely and officially first Qt Symbian phone will be available 2012 but I guess it's here faster as the Qt for Symbian port is almost done by now.
This and all the Symbian roadmaps are BTW public stuff so no need to spread rumors, please check Symbian Foundation at http://www.symbian.org/.
Great post and totally agree with your predictions/rumors. One side comment...I'd really like to see iPhone written as iPhone because somehow when I read Iphone it doesn't click my head as the Apple product iPhone.
Petteri,
Thanks for the link. I don't think they state there the phone lines that will move to Maemo, just as they didn't state that N Series will move away from Symbian before it came out elsewhere.
Garry,
Good catch. Thanks! Now corrected.
Log in or Sign up to leave comments