Reports carried in the German edition of the Financial Times that Nokia is planning to drop its Symbian smartphone OS have been flatly denied by the company. The newspaper, claiming to have inside information, stated that Symbian had become too cumbersome and its 20 million lines of code was leading to poor performance.
To overcome this issue, according to the unnamed Nokia source, the company would abandon the Symbian platform for its smartphone devices in favour of its preferred Linux platform, Maemo.
While this summer madness story might have been triggered by someone catching a glimpse of upcoming Maemo devices - which look closer to the N Series than the existing Linux tablets, the more rational observers are totally dismissing the idea of Nokia killing off Symbian.
Having spent over US$400 million to acquire full control of Symbian (albeit to then make it open source), the OS is arguably the most robust and mature smartphone software on the market. For Nokia to now suddenly dump this proven OS for a mobile Linux-based platform would be near suicidal, whereas to pump further R&D money into combating Apple and RIM, and taking Symbian into the mass-market, is the obvious route.
Prior to pushing forward with a mobile Linux strategy, Nokia has more critical problems to resolve than switching smartphone OSs. First on the list must be a revamp to its aging and confusing product portfolio, and then kicking its dire Ovi Store into something approaching the 21st century.
For more on this story:
Total Telecom, Rethink Wireless and Techcrunch
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