Will Nokia Dump Symbian for Android? Um, No.
Nokia will not debut a new Android-based handset at its annual Nokia World conference in early September because the company has no new Android-based handset to debut.
That’s the word from Nokia, which vehemently denied reports this morning that it is just months away from launching its first mobile phone based on Google’s mobile OS. “There is no truth to this story whatsoever,” the company said in a statement. “It is a well known fact that Symbian is our platform of choice for smartphones.”
Indeed. It was a just a little over a year ago that Nokia (NOK) invested some $410 million in the platform, establishing the Symbian Foundation and releasing the Symbian OS as a royalty-free open mobile platform. It seems unlikely that the company would jeopardize that effort by rolling out an Android touchscreen phone at its annual conference. Even more unlikely when you consider that Symbian is by far the world’s leading smartphone software platform. It might not have as much buzz as Google’s (GOOG) Android or Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone 3.0 or Palm’s (PALM) new webOS, but Symbian still claims 47 percent of the mobile OS market.