Sony Ericsson confirms Symbian spurning
Our Android army is all we need
Sony Ericsson has confirmed that it has no plans to make more handsets based on Symbian, which shouldn't surprise anyone but is still bad news for the dominant smartphone OS.
Sony Ericsson did make some nice Symbian handsets in its time, but had clearly moved over to Android along with most of the industry (Nokia excepted), so the comments made to Bloomberg come as less of a change and more the final closing of the door that some hoped had been left ajar.
Sony Ericsson launched a couple of Symbian handsets early this year, the Vivaz and Vivaz Pro, but the company's heart wasn't in it and since then we've had four Android handsets launched and a clear focus on Google's OS for the smartphone end of the market.
Anyone hoping to find support for Symbian lurking within Sony Ericsson should take a look at the company's new LiveView product - a tiny screen that integrates with Android handsets from any manufacturer, with no mention of Symbian anywhere.
The Symbian Foundation, custodian of the now-open OS, doesn't covet the smartphone space these days, preferring to bill itself as bringing smartphone functionality at feature phone prices. But there's not a lot of space with Android above and proprietary OSs below, especially as web apps and Java fulfil that requirement so neatly. ®
COMMENTS
SE, not the OS, at fault
The P800 to P910 where great (for the time) smartphones.
Everything after that from SE was late and under delivered on the UX. I think this is a problem with SE rather than the OS. I don't see how Android is going to change the organisational culture.
Ho hum, after a run of 6 SE handsets, I've gone Apple. And I'm not going back.
Fail
Poor decision.
The Android pool is swimming with sharks and SE's phones have been very disappointing for a long time. There's no way they're going to win any wars in this segment unless there's a massive change.
Competing with just Nokia, Samsung and possibly LG (there've been rumours about them revisiting symbian) would be a lot easier, particularly with what looks like will be a resurgent symbian when SF^3 and then more importantly SF^4 hit.
Simple Answer
"It makes one wonder why why HTC is even bothering to make a Win 7 handset"
It couldn't be that MS is paying HTC to make a Win7 handset now could it?
It wouldn't be the first time after all.
After the Kin fiasco it might be quite some time before MS try releasing their own badged handset.
Give up on Microsoft in the phone arena
@fishman, I don't know if people have given up on Microsoft in the phone market, period. But the fact of the matter is, Windows Mobile 6.5 is a dead end, and really is showing it's antiquated roots. Windows Phone 7 is simply not compelling, it's not a matter of "giving up", this is simply a market where Microsoft has to actually compete and their product is apparently not competitive. I know based on specs, reviews, videos & photos it didn't grab my interest in the slightest. I don't really care how much money they are willing to spend or how long they are willing to stay in the market, I care about results. I'd like to add at this point, they are the king of vaporware, so I'm sure if Windows Phone 7 doesn't do well they'll talk almost immediately about how great Windows Phone 8 and how it'll be out Real Soon Now(tm); they have dropped features on, cancelled, or altered beyond recognition, so many projects that I will believe it when I see it. Anything radically new they came out with surely take at least a year or two though, so I suppose in the sort term I've given up on them.
Anyway.. I've never used a Symbian device, it seems like if it's still selling well it'd make sense to make a few more Symbian phones. But personally, I would get an Android phone over a Symbian phone.
The dreaded P990
I used to work for Symbian and when I started the company game me my first phone. It was the aforementioned Sony Ericsson P990i and what a pile of junk it was. It was under-developed in almost every area and it did nothing well. Even making calls was a nightmare.
It soon became a joke in the office and I never went near SE again.
