Slashdot Mirror
Nokia - No More Symbian Phones After 2012
mikejuk writes "After the decision to go with Windows Phone 7 it has been obvious that the fate of the Symbian Phone — the phone that sold more than iPhone or Android — wasn't good. However where there is life there is hope and some developers and users clung to the hope that there might be more Symbian phones in the future. Perhaps they could coexist with Nokia Windows Phone 7 devices. Now, in a open letter to developers Nokia have made it clear that they will create no more Symbian phones after 2012 and they will just wait for the old phones to fade way while trying to sell Windows Phones to the existing users."
The biggest issue was not that they abandoned Symbian. They were already set to do that anyway, what with MeeGo taking over on their highest-end devices and gradually onto mid-tier smartphones.
The biggest blunder was that they abandoned Qt as a development platform. That was their one strategy that would have kept new applications and development coming. You'd write an app using Qt (with some enhancements), and would with minimal effort be able to tailor both Symbian^3 and MeeGo devices.
That train has now left the station. There is now NO SINGLE application environment that a developer can use to tailor current and future Nokia phones. Not Java/J2ME. Not Symbian. Not MeeGo/Maemo. Not Qt.
Nokia has made a lot of serious blunders throughout the last few years (the N85 hardware quality, the N97 software quality, an ASD style management, etc). Allowing themselves to be completely hijacked by Elan/Microsoft for a last ditch futile attempt to promote WP7 is nothing short of astounding. The worlds largest cell phone maker, and at one point in recent history Europe's most valuable company, completely destroyed as little more than a pawn in Steve Ballmer's clumsy quest for making Microsoft relevant again is simply nothing short of astounding.
Nokias. Biggest. Blunder. Ever.