Nokia to stop shipping Symbian smartphones

Nokia's once very popular Symbian OS has been making it to the news headlines recently for not so good reasons. The popular OS had been on a steady decline, ever since Android and iOS came into the picture, leading to the day when reports emerged saying Symbian was on its way out. A report by the Financial Times is now the latest to state that Finnish giant Nokia will soon stop shipping smartphones running its Symbian OS. According to this report, the company wants to focus its energies on Windows Phone now.

Elaborating on its decision, the company was quoted as saying, “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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The last of the Symbians

Nokia loyalists and tech enthusiasts in general would know that the Symbian OS was once a very powerful word, before the entry of Android and iOS-based smartphones. Symbian was the world’s biggest smartphone platform till as late as 2011, when Android overtook it. Symbian was born in 1998 – a joint effort between Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola and Psion. The platform soon found its way onto several devices, including a number of Sony Ericsson and Samsung phones.

The partnership, however, did not get the desired results and a decade later, the Espoo-based company took all control of Symbian. To lure other OEMs and developers, it made the platform open-source. However, that strategy did not succeed either and a lack of takers meant market share was on a steady decline.

In January this year, Nokia confirmed during an earnings call that the 808 PureView, released in 2012, was the last device on the Symbian platform. “During our transition to Windows Phone through 2012, we continued to ship devices based on Symbian. The Nokia 808 PureView, a device which showcases our imaging capabilities and which came to market in mid-2012, was the last Symbian device from Nokia,” Nokia's 2012 Interim Report said.