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Why Nokia won’t divorce Symbian for Android?

Yesterday, rumors about Nokia looking into running Google Android OS on an upcoming smartphone drew a lot of attention (via Guardian). Nokia has flatly denied any plans to go Android and refreshes its commitment for the Symbian platform.

androidNokia is forever married to the Symbian platform and it’s going to be a long shot if we can ever see a Nokia handset with an Android OS in it. Why?

Well, first of all, there’s that $700 million dollar reason. Nokia bought out the remaining 52% of Symbian last year for a reportedly €264 million ($368 million) big bucks.

Nokia is also promoting its own non-profit Symbian Foundation which combined several different operating systems (Symbian OS, S60, UIQ, MOAP) and made the whole thing open source (read: free, just like Android).

Nokia also bought into a lot of other properties that ride on the same ecosystem. One prominent example is Navteq for $8.1 billion (it has to make money off of Nokia Maps to get that investment back). Going Android also means dropping Nokia Maps for Google Maps (Navteq provided maps to Yahoo, Google and Microsoft and makes over half a billion in sales a year).

Last month, Intel and Nokia announced a strategic partnership and support development of Moblin and Maemo platform for future mobile computing devices.

Nokia is slowly losing the smartphone wars — analysts at HSBC reckon Nokia had 47% of the global smartphone market in 2007; that was down to 35% last summer and 31% at the end of the year {via}. Meanwhile, the Blackberry, iPhone 3G, Palm Pre and Android phones are gaining momentum.

If Nokia gives in to Android as the better platform than Symbian, it will continue to lose market share in the growing smartphone market. It has also invested a lot of marketing money and resources to promote Ovi. It looks like it’s Symbian or nothing for Nokia.

Do you think Nokia should just drop Symbian, specifically the S60 platform, for a better one?

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Avatar for Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

26 Responses

  1. Avatar for click here click here says:

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  2. Avatar for magflicks magflicks says:

    there’s no need to shift from symbian. They should just take part on improving the OS

  3. Avatar for Jham Jham says:

    ang masabi ko lang sa nokia.. maghire sila ng magagaling na programmer na kaya iupgrade ang OS nila na tulad ng ANDROID at IOS same lang lahat naman ng logic at life cycle ng code niyan… different Programming Language ang ginamit pero isa lang ang point makagawa ng OS… logic lang ang hindi makuha nila, dati sa pinas nokia ang sikat. ngayon kahit china phone natatalo sila. bakit? dahil mura na my features na wala sa nokia at meron features na wala ang nokia…
    ano laban ng nokia vs tv phone
    nokia vs 2sim card
    nokia vs wifi+2sim+android+tv cheaper price
    maganda lang kay nokia ay ang camera
    market strategy sa features mahina.
    kung maglalabas ang china na unit with high-end camera paano na?

  4. Avatar for TheRohan TheRohan says:

    Hey Guys, yet another opportunity exclusively for you by Forum Nokia!

    We want to challenge you for another mobile development event this 2010. Together with CodeSpark, Nokia Philippines invites you to join our CodeSpark program.

    You can build new and innovative applications targeted at the Philippine market. This program is in search for the next killer app implemented on Nokia devices that will be published on the Nokia Ovi Store and on myGlobe.

    Winning teams will get P 25,000 cash and brand new Nokia Smartphone!!

    Join now and help spread the word by visiting the CodeSpark page on Facebook!!

    For more information visit here https://www.globelabs.com.ph/Pages/CodeSpark.aspx

  5. Avatar for dirch dirch says:

    Thing is, developers want to develop apps that can be used by more users. I think smart phones in the future are all about the apps that can be installed in it. I own a nokia s60 5th edition phone and comparing the available apps with what’s available for the iphone, You can see why iphone is so popular.

  6. Avatar for Tyrone Peterson Tyrone Peterson says:

    Very useful information, always good to learn more.

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