Symbian ^3 not a short-lived step stone, says Nokia

If you thought Symbian^3 is meant to be just a short-lived stepping stone in Nokia's smartphone evolution, then you'll be surprised. Starting with the upcoming N8, Nokia aims to ship more than 50 million Symbian^3 devices in the coming years, alongside devices using other versions of the Symbian OS, said Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo and CFO Timo Ihamuotila, talking with industry analysts today. They promised a whole "family" of Symbian^3 devices, reinforcing Nokia's strategy that Symbian will remain at the heart of its smartphones in the future.

"The feedback from operators on the N8 and Symbian^3 has been very good," they said. "The Nokia N8 will have a user experience superior to that of any smartphone Nokia has produced. I'm optimistic that the N8 will be the first step towards overcoming the challenges we face at the high end of our portfolio."

They explained that the N8 and Symbian^3 mark a change in the way Nokia creates smartphones. For one thing, the approach is a lot more software-centric, which should make product development easier. For another, Symbian^3 will also be much more uniform across different phones than has been the case with previous Symbian releases. This spells good news for developers (and the people that use their applications) since they will be able to more easily create apps that work across the whole family.

They also touched on the role of Symbian and MeeGo in Nokia's portfolio. "Symbian is about leveraging scale and expanding the smartphone category to cover a broad mass market footprint. In contrast, MeeGo is about leveraging speed and agility to create industry leading flagship solutions."
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