Nokia will finally stop shipping Symbian OS smartphones in favour of Windows Phone devices this summer, according to The Financial Times.
Symbian-powered devices once dominated the smartphone market, but failed to match the innovation and usability of Apple's iOS and Google's Android.
In February, 2011, Nokia announced it was abandoning Symbian for the newly-announced Windows Phone, but has continued producing devices using the older OS.
(Source: FT)The final shipment means the Finnish group’s fortunes in the smartphone market now rest entirely on Microsoft’s fledgling Windows Mobile software.Symbian still accounts for a small, single-digit share in many major markets, and was surpassed by Nokia’s Lumia range of Windows-based smartphones only in the past year. The latest Lumia device, the 925, will go on sale around Europe this week.Kantar Worldpanel estimates that Symbian held a European market share of about 1.8 per cent in the three months to April, down from 8 per cent in the year before. It still accounts for about 2 per cent of the vast Chinese market.However, Nokia sold just 500,000 Symbian units in the first quarter of 2013, much less than the 5.6m Windows-based Lumia phones, which meant that the operating system accounted for less than 5 per cent of overall smartphone sales.Nokia developed the last new Symbian device in 2012 – the 808 Pureview – although it has continued to ship handsets using the operating system given its enduring popularity in some countries.Nokia said: “It took 22 months to get a Symbian phone out of the door. With Windows Phone, it is less than a year. We spend less time having to tinker with deep-lying code and more time on crafting elements of the experience that make a big difference, such as around photography, maps, music and apps in general.”
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