Rich Fiscus
13 Sep 2011 15:09
The Symbian OS accounted for less than 40% of smartphones in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK in July of this year. That would be good news for other vendors, but represents a major drop for the market leader.
Symbian was running on more than half of all smartphones in those countries just a year earlier.
That's not good news for Nokia, whose CEO recently told an interviewer his company expects to convert the company's existing Symbian customers to Windows Phone. If Android's ascension in the market continues, that won't be much of a feat.
Nokia has put nearly all their eggs in Microsoft's basket, betting on Windows Phone to put them back on top in the smartphone industry. Even after the iPhone's introduction, their Symbian phones continued to sell well.
The addition of even more serious competition from Android phones, particularly from Samsung and HTC, combined with missteps in Symbian development led to the freefall they have experienced in recent months.