James Delahunty
26 Mar 2011 3:15
Nokia has moved to quash fears that it may be preparing to drop Symbian-based phones much too quickly.
The Finnish mobile phone giant said it will continue to sell handsets that run Symbian software for a long time after it has started to move devices that run Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 software. The company is expected to begin phasing out Symbian over the coming few years as it rolls out WP7 handsets.
"We will be selling (Symbian) devices long after Windows Phone devices from Nokia have already started to appear," Purnima Kochikar, head of developer relations at Nokia, said in a letter to devs. Symbian phones have lost market share due to competition from iOS and Android models, but it is still strongly profitable for Nokia.
Kochikar said that coming Symbian models will focus on strong integration of services, and that they will use faster processors than their predecessors. They will brought up to GHz+ levels, which is where Nokia's competitors are already at. Both Nokia's N8 and E7 use 680 MHz processors.