Nokia has said that it has officially discontinued its once-dominant Symbian mobile operating system, with the last device to be powered by the platform being the Nokia 808 PureView (a successor is said to be in the works).
The Finnish handset manufacturer said during its 2012 fourth quarter earnings that it'll now exclusively focus on Microsoft's Windows Phone platform, which has powered recent smartphone devices from the former such as the Lumia slate.
"During our transition to Windows Phone through 2012, we continued to ship devices based on Symbian," it said. "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."
Symbian-powered handsets shipped a total of 2.2 million units during 2012's fourth-quarter. In comparison, Nokia sold 4.4 million Lumia smartphone units, accompanied by a total of 86.3 million total handset sales.
Coming into fruition back in 1998, Symbian started as a joint venture between Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola and Psion. It enjoyed immense success and was the world's most used mobile platform. During 2006, it accounted for more than 73 percent of the smartphone market. However, its dominance was pushed out by Google's Android ecosystem, as well as Apple's iOS.
