Nokia dropping Symbian from N-Series by 2012
This evening, at the official N900 meet-up in London, the Maemo marketing team revealed that Nokia plan to drop Symbian from the entire ‘top end’ N-Series range of handsets in favour of Maemo by 2012. — The future for N-Series: Maemo
Context & Ripple Effects
Nokia’s stated 2012 direction reverses the emphasis of its August commitment to Symbian and extends its September plan to develop Maemo-based devices for the high-end segment. With the N900 already shipping, the company is positioning Maemo as the software foundation for the part of its portfolio meant to define its top tier.
First-order effects
- Nokia’s N-Series roadmap shifts its top-end handset software work from Symbian to Maemo, making Maemo central to the range by 2012.
- Symbian loses its planned role in Nokia’s flagship N-Series devices even as Nokia had publicly affirmed its commitment to the platform months earlier.
Second-order effects
- Developers seeking Nokia’s high-end customers will need to prioritize Maemo alongside Symbian, rather than treating Symbian as the single route to the company’s leading devices.
- Nokia’s platform and handset teams face a sharper need to distinguish Maemo’s high-end role from the Symbian devices that remain in the broader portfolio.
Third-order effects
- If Nokia executes the transition, its flagship-device strategy will be defined by a platform handoff rather than incremental Symbian upgrades, raising the cost of maintaining separate software ecosystems.
- The move points to handset makers using distinct operating systems to segment product tiers, with developer support and application availability becoming part of the competition between those tiers.
The trend: Nokia is shifting its high-end handset strategy toward a newer software platform, even while Symbian remains part of its wider device portfolio.