Nokia’s Symbian platform: End of an ERA as shipments come to end

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Symbian icons

Symbian icons

Aren’t these icons beautiful? They are synonymous with Nokia’s Symbian OS that propelled the Finnish company to mobile phone fame. Well, things went awry and you wont be seeing these icons for long in the shops, at-least in Symbian handsets who’s production is set to be discontinued this quarter according to Financial Times. The icons in question will still be available on Nokia’s Series 40 based Asha and Asha platform based devices. Nokia’s last Symbian based device is the 41MP Nokia Pureview, so if you are an antique shopper, I advice that you make reservations before they start going on auction on E bay at outrageous prices. 🙂

Nokia stood the test of time when business took a nosedive as a result of fierce competition from rivals in the iOS and Android platforms, Blackberry took a similar hit and both went back to the drawing board.
Blackberry came up with Blackberry 10 OS while still maintaining the old OS, BB OS5, BB OS6 and BB OS7 for previous devices, production continues. Nokia on the other hand decided to bite the bullet, declared Symbian a burning platform, jumped ship and now they are on their way to safe waters with Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS. They are yet to make a huge impact but there is tremendous growth and acceptance of the Windows OS platform which Nokia dominates prominently.

Nokia shipped 61.9 million mobile phones in the first quarter, a number attributed to the entry level feature phones in the Asha category. Lumia shipments were 5.6 million and Symbian sales were a meagre half a million.

“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,” said Nokia without any source quoted.

Currently Nokia has 16 Lumias in it’s Windows smartphone category divided into two categories, Windows Phone 7.5 based and Windows 8 based.

Nokia Lumia 510, Nokia Lumia 610, Nokia Lumia 710, Nokia Lumia 710 T-mobile, Nokia Lumia 800, Nokia Lumia 900, Nokia Lumia 900 T-mobile as the Windows phone 7.5 devices and Nokia Lumia 520, Nokia Lumia 620, Nokia Lumia 720, Nokia Lumia 820, Nokia Lumia 822, Nokia Lumia 920, Nokia Lumia 920T, Nokia Lumia 925 and Nokia Lumia 928 in the Windows phone 8 category.