Sony Ericsson confirms Symbian spurning

Our Android army is all we need

Posted in Mobile, 28th September 2010 14:19 GMT

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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. ®

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