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Rumor: Nokia’s next Symbian device will also be their last

Categories: Nokia, Symbian
By: , IntoMobile
Monday, February 6th, 2012 at 12:20 AM
Nokia-and-Microsoft

This coming Saturday will mark the one year anniversary of the historic day when Stephen Elop, Nokia’s new CEO, got up on a stage in London and announced to the world that both Symbian and Maemo were going to be thrown under the bus, and that the future would be all about Windows Phone. One thing Stephen mentioned during that announcement was that Nokia still has plans to sell 150 million Symbian smartphones. That’s recently changed though. Late last month when Nokia reported their Q4 2011 financial results they said that:

“As a result of the changing market conditions, combined with our increased focus on Lumia, we now believe that we will sell fewer Symbian devices than we previously anticipated.”

Now Nokia didn’t quantify what “fewer Symbian devices” actually means. It could be 1 million fewer, it could be 50 million fewer. Here’s where Andrew Orlowski from The Register comes in. He’s been covering the tech industry for more than a decade, and his sources are generally bulletproof. They’re telling him that Nokia’s cancelled all their upcoming Symbian devices except for one, the successor to the Nokia N8. When someone asked Eldar Murtazin if Andrew’s story was accurate, he said yes.

Does any of this really sound surprising though? When you think about, Nokia wants to sell Windows Phones, and anything else is just a distraction. Later this month we expect to hear details about Tango, the next version of Microsoft’s mobile OS that runs on device with lower end hardware specifications and supposedly has support for 120 different languages. Sounds like an awesome replacement for Symbian, doesn’t it?

As for this final device in question, something tells us that similar to the Nokia N9, a lot of love will be put into it. It may very well be the last really awesome pure Nokia smartphone. If you’ve been kicking yourself in the ass for not buying the N9, then this camera flagship is right up your ally.

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

  • Anonymous

    Thats a shame, so much for ‘many new devices still to come’.

  • Pipo

    I’ve been telling that should have done is ages ago. A N9 with Symbian. Then they’d have at least ONE of these designs coupled with an OS  that fully use the hardware.

    I doubt that Symbian’s resolution is scalable it will at least break a lot (current) of apps. Whom I believe are build around a 640×360 pixel resolution. Also a higher resolution would  eat power which would also mean that this N8-succesor wouldn’t last 2 days like all current low-res-Symbian devices.

    Things that most ppl don;t seem to consider. They rather nag about it.

  • http://www.facebook.com/gourab.chakrabortty.1 Gourab Chakrabortty

    dont know why nokia is cancelling their symbian smartphones..? symbian is a solid built good user interface os.. i love my nokia 701