In the fierce battle between mobile operating systems, Symbian has been the top platform worldwide. But that strength may be weakening with the news Thursday that Samsung will drop its support for Symbian.
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In a posting on its Platform blog, the device maker said its support will be discontinued as of Dec. 31, and it recommended that any Symbian-related issues be posted or material be downloaded before that deadline. It also said its registration and certification of Symbian applications will cease on that date.
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Sony Ericsson Dropped Symbian
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The news follows by about a week Sony Ericsson’s decision to similarly drop support for Symbian. Neither handset maker had been hugely invested in releasing Symbian devices, but they had helped broaden the base of the platform, whose leading proponent is Nokia, the world’s largest handset maker.
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Nokia, like BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, has been criticized for not revamping its operating system to compete with the two hottest ones, Apple’s iOS and Google’s open-source Android. RIM, which recently unveiled a tablet with an operating system from its QNX acquisition, is reported on the verge of releasing new handsets with some form of the QNX OS.
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Symbian was originally developed by a company of the same name that was acquired by Nokia and made available to other manufacturers. LG Electronics has also indicated it’s abandoning Symbian, which leaves Fujitsu, Huawei, Sharp and Nokia as members of the Symbian Foundation, which was created to promote and coordinate the platform.
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But Nokia isn’t exactly standing still. The company has also been putting energy into MeeGo, an operating system it developed for high-end smartphones and tablets. In addition, upcoming releases of Symbian are expected to make it more competitive against iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7 Series. Nokia has also announced it will release Windows Phone 7…