Nokia: Symbian remains our choice for smartphones

Financial Times previously spread a rumor that Nokia might dump the Symbian operating system and instead go for LinuxOS, Mameo. The rumor spread like a fire and it was reported by numerous blogs.

Well here is a twist in the tale. Symbian will soon release an overhauled version of its operating system later this year and will eventually release it to developers and handset makers.

Given that Nokia had bought shares worth $410 million on Symbian before open sourcing it, I couldn’t buy into the story. A similar non-sensical rumor had surfaced a few months ago and was quickly shot down by Nokia.

Today, Nokia spokesperson dismissed the rumor:

We absolutely remain committed to Symbian and S60. Symbian remains our choice for smartphones and we’ll continue to see enhancements that further the value and experiences on this platform.

Nokia is working on non-smartphone devices such as the N900 tablet. Maemo is the operating system for Nokia’s Internet tablets.

The spokesman further said:

However, recognizing that the value we bring to the consumer is increasingly represented through software, there is logically not just one software environment that fits all consumer and market needs,

He went on saying that:

In addition, as we’ve stated before, we also continue to explore opportunities around a new class of devices that we see as the next segment of high performance mobile devices. Maemo is very much part of that thinking but of course there’s nothing new to announce in this regard.

Many of us truly believe that Nokia and Symbian are slow in their response to the challenges posed by other Internet mobile operating systems: Google’s Android, Palm’s WebOS and Apple’s iPhone OS.