Nokia 808 Pureview Was The Last Symbian Phone? - If, Then What's Next?

Officially, the Symbian OS era is gone. Now it's dead. Today, Nokia declared their Q4 quarterly earnings for their FY 2012  and confirmed that they are done with producing Symbian phones. Nokia Pureview was the last symbian phone according to Nokia's official statement.

Nokia 808 Pureview

In no uncertain terms:

"The Nokia 808 PureView, a device which showcases our imaging capabilities and which came to market in mid-2012, was the last Symbian device from Nokia."

This confirms long-floated reports starting over a year ago that the PureView would be the last view we'd have of Symbian. Accoding to Nokia's earning report of today, the company still managed to sell a total of 2.2 million Symbian devices during the last quarter, half the number of Windows Phone 8 devices shifted in the same period -- presumably thanks, in some way, to that as-yet unparalleled PureView camera sensor. Prior to the gatecrash from Android and Apple, Symbian was the world's biggest smartphone platform, a position it held until 2011, when it was overtaken by Android. Symbian started its life around 1998, first conceived as a multi-vendor effort between Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola and Psion to create a common smartphone platform to be used all four companies' devices. The partnership never really worked as smoothly as intended — although devices did come out of it. As of last quarter, Symbian accounted for only 2.6% of smartphone handset shipments, compared to over 72% for Android. Part of that is due to demand, and part of that is because Nokia has been putting significantly less effort on those devices. As with the rest of today's earnings, there were signals earlier this month that Nokia would finally admit the end of Symbian today. Then, executives noted that Q4 would be the "last meaningful quarter for Symbian" on Nokia's balance sheet and in its business. Perhaps a fitting end for Symbian though, the one device that pulled it together (in most places), and till now remains unchallenged in the imaging arena; perhaps making way for a Lumia brethren with the same sensor? News has started to leak out that the celebrated PureView imaging technology would start appearing in Lumia devices later this year.
Read more...