Is the Symbian cellular phone operating system dead?

Nokia Corp. announced a major shift in its corporate strategy Friday, stating Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Phone will become the primary operating system for Nokia smart phones.

The future of Symbian, an open source operating system for wireless cellular devices, is unclear. What is clear is Nokia plans to focus more on its core hardware business and leave the operating system to a firm such as Microsoft that specializes in operating systems. It probably did not throw in its lot with Android simply because Google's core business is online search and advertising rather than operating systems. This does not explain why Nokia chose to use Bing rather than Google on its devices.

Helsinki-based Nokia had 34 per cent of the mobile device market last year, according to Gartner Inc.

Technology news site Engadget  predicts that in 2012, Nokia will "pull the cord on life support" for Symbian.

Nokia, however, states it "expects" to sell about 150 million more devices with the Symbian operating system.

Alberto Torres, who until Thursday Feb. 10 was executive vice-president for MeeGo Computers at Nokia, has left the company to "pursue other interests."

But this does not mean MeeGo, the open source mobile operating system supported by Nokia and Intel Corp., is dead.

Although some media reports speculated Nokia would drop the MeeGo platform, Nokia stated in a press release Friday: "Under the new strategy, MeeGo becomes an open-source, mobile operating system project. MeeGo will place increased emphasis on longer-term market exploration of next-generation devices, platforms and user experiences. Nokia still plans to ship a MeeGo-related product later this year."

Nokia also stated it plans to "contribute its expertise on hardware design, language support, and help bring Windows Phone to a larger range of price points, market segments and geographies."

This announcement is simply an acknowledgment by Nokia that Symbian's market share has been dropping due in part to the rise in popularity of wireless devices with Google's Android operating system and Apple's iPhones.

Research from Gartner shows 41 per cent of smart phones shipped during the second quarter of 2010 had the Symbian operating system, down from 51 per cent a year earlier. During the same time, the market share for Android grew from 1.8 to 17.2 per cent.

Last Friday, Nokia also announced its devices would use Microsoft's Bing search engine, and Nokia Maps would be integrated into Bing.