NSeries: Nokia drops Symbian in 2012

Nokia has announced the plans to drop Symbian for its top-end smartphone range also known as NSeries, just as Google expressed interest in producing an Android phone on its own, reports TelecomTV, last weekend.

The report also said that Google phone story is thriving in the ‘no comment’ vacuum it traditionally reserves for future product announcements.

The rumour mill says the phone is going to be some sort of up-market stunner and the idea of Google going it alone to produce (or rather contract a manufacturer to produce) a phone is certainly feasible and has its attractions as a strategy.

Google’s position on the Google-led Open Handset Alliance which promotes Android, theoretically doesn’t rule it out of building an Android phone itself - the more manufacturers the merrier.

The report further said that the motivation could have come based on the power of Google as a brand.

Other theories mooted by industry watchers to explain Google’s move including that if it is making a move to provide a mobile device spearhead, then it should be for WiMAX enabled.

Over on MoCoNews they reckon that Google is an investor in Clearwire which is building a nationwide 4G wireless broadband network.

It is also touted that Google could embed a mobile WiMax chipset into the phone, which would connect to Clearwire’s network.

When the user leaves the Clearwire territory, it could roam on to Sprint’s CDMA network, which is Clearwire’s majority owner.

Meanwhile our friends at The Really Mobile Project have been out and about listening to Nokia’s Tanja Sauvola from its Maemo marketing team. Maemo is Nokia’s ‘mobile Internet device’ OS and Tanja seems to have revealed to assembled bloggers “that Nokia plan to drop Symbian from the entire ‘top end’ N-Series range of handsets in favour of Maemo by 2012.”

This news probably doesn’t surprise anyone who has used a Symbian phone and switched to Android or the iPhone recently.

The ‘user experience’ as the current terminology avails is that it has been so improved on the new touchphones that it’s difficult to believe that Symbian could possibly hold on to its current 50 per cent smartphone market share - unless some UI improvements to the system arrive pronto.

Maemo, on the other hand, has been getting plaudits as the Linux-based OS powering Nokia’s N900 device.

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