Free Newsletter
Symbian loses key customer as Samsung walks
With the smartphone sector undergoing rapid growth, for Symbian to lose Samsung as a customer will come as a hammer blow to the company as it struggles to establish itself as a mass-market open OS provider.
The Korean company has announced that it will no longer use the Symbian OS in its smartphones from next year, believing that its own upcoming platform, Samsung bada, would be a better fit to the wide range of popular mass market touchscreen phones in its portfolio.
The move away from Symbian, according to Samsung's senior VP, Don Joo Lee, was part of a strategy rethink whereby the company wants to boost its handset shipments between 10 to 20 per cent from its 2009 target of about 200 million. While Samsung has confirmed it would continue to use Android and Windows Mobile, analysts have predicted the use of Windows Mobile would drop significantly next year.
Symbian has depended primarily on Nokia for support and this still seems secure, although there are indications that the company will place its bet on Maemo 6 for high-end smartphones in the years ahead. Sony Ericsson and multiple Japanese manufacturers building for NTT DoCoMo are Symbian's other major customers.
For more on this story:
Info Syncworld
Related stories:
Symbian apps developers question future of OS
Symbian exec: We'll keep 50% of smartphone OS market
Symbian: Dominance under threat, and Malware on the rise
Symbian OS dumped by Motorola
Comments
Posted by Anonymous | November 12, 2009 - 4:50am
Are you mental? 'Struggles to establish itself' How is 46% market share 'struggling'?
Posted by Anonymous | November 13, 2009 - 1:55pm
The thing is that people do not really know what is Symbian, and what is Symbian doing right now. Problem is that "journalists" and bloggers, especially those in the US, are very shortsighted. Look what is really happening inside Symbian. (not just Nokia). China Mobile, Qualcomm, etc. I think Symbian is on hold for some manufactorers, waiting for the transition to be finished. If this is done, i believe it will be nr. 1 to choose from, for operators, manufactorers and even consumers.
Comments (2) | Post a comment