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.
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Zak Islam is a freelance writer focusing on security, networking, and general computing. His work also appears at Digital Trends and Tom's Guide.
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machvelocy A bit of sad farewell, Symbian belle is not that bad for a mobile OS, I had one (Nokia 701) before I switch to a htc one last year, the UI are smooth and quite polished, however apps loading are indeed slow (relative to iOS and android), and lacks of it in their marketplace.Reply -
To be more correct, they will not be releasing another symbian^3 powered phone. However, they are still officially supporting and develping the OS until at least 2016.Reply
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Cryio At least it went out with a bang. Pure View is the greatest Symbian phone ever made, and Nokia Belle 2, as an OS, is all a phone really needs. If all you want is just phone with some tricks.Reply -
mariusmotea The big profiit in last 2012 has come from phones with symbian for Nokia. Now is all or nothing with windows phone.Reply -
NightLight 3 words: about damn time! it was indeed once the greatest os, but now it's just oldReply -
Correction: Symbian was a joint venture between Psion and Motorola, Nokia and Ericsson.Reply
Sony Ericsson did not exist in 1998, it was formed in 2001 as a joint venture between Sony and the Swedish telecommunications equipment company Ericsson. -
_TuxUser_ Funny thing is that during X-Mas sales Nokia Symbian Smartphones outsold the Lumia phones 2 to 1.Reply -
Vorador2 One of the best phones i ever had was a Nokia N73, with Symbian of course. It never failed me.Reply
Symbian was good, but it's time to move on.