Finally Symbian is going to die (as expected), an OS which changed the mobilephone to “smartphone” is not good enough to survive in this “Android” era. Nokia today officially announced that it is going to phase out Symbian OS. However Nokia won’t be doing it immediately (it was not made clear how long this process will take) so that it may continue to support Symbian’s huge installed base. MeeGo will remain alive, though its future is also uncertain. According to a press release in London “Nokia and Microsoft today (11th feb) announced plans to form a broad strategic partnership that would use their complementary strengths and expertise to create a new global mobile ecosystem”.
As a long term strategy, Nokia will adopt Windows Phone as its primary smartphone OS. As per the agreement between the two companies, Nokia will innovate on top of WP7 in areas such as imaging etc. The two companies will use their respective expertise to bring WP7 to a wider number of consumers. Other strategic changes (as part of the partnership) would be:
1. Nokia will adopt Bing as its primary search service on its smartphones
2. Microsoft will adopt Nokia Maps (built on Navteq’s mapping data) as its core mapping service. Maps would be integrated with Bing and adCenter advertising platform to form “a unique search and advertising experience”.
3. Microsoft development tools will replace Nokia’s current developer tools to create applications that will run on Windows Phone7 devices.
4. Nokia’s Ovi Store will be merged into Microsoft Marketplace.
However it is not clear when the first Nokia WP7 device would reach the market.
Are Android and iOS going to have a tough time in the days to come??
Mobile news