Nokia dropping Symbian from N-Series by 2012 [UPDATED]

by Ben Smith on 18th November 2009

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This evening, at the official N900 meet-up in London, Tanja Sauvola from the Maemo marketing team revealed in a Q&A with bloggers (after giving the first of the evening’s three presentations) that Nokia plan to drop Symbian from the entire ‘top end’ N-Series range of handsets in favour of Maemo by 2012.

The future for N-Series: Maemo

The future for N-Series: Maemo

The transition will be a gradual one with further Symbian-based N-Series handsets already in development, she said.  Whilst the N900 was acknowledged to be a ‘bridge’ device firmly aimed at the developer and enthusiast community, subsequent devices will target the mass-market and Maemo-based devices will grow to fill all of Nokia’s flagship range by 2012. There are no current plans for Maemo devices in the new video-focused X-Series range or popular E-Series enterprise range, but Nokia had been surprised by the enthusiasm with which the N900 and the latest incarnation of Maemo have been received so further expansion isn’t out of the question.

‘Maemo Select’, the current community-portal for Maemo applications, will initially run alongside Nokia’s Ovi store, which is due to launch for the N900 via a software update next month.  However, in the longer term it too will be retired leaving only the Ovi Store as the official Nokia source for free and paid applications promoted on Symbian and Maemo devices.

Although there has been much speculation about the future of Symbian and Maemo and the relationship between the two – Nokia intends to retain both, producing development tools that will work across the two – this is the first official confirmation I am aware of that Symbian is to be relegated from the symbolic N-Series brand.  It’s a bold move by Nokia, but a smart one… Recently Symbian’s greatest strength, it’s legacy and maturity, has begun to look like an Achilles heal as newer platforms have captured consumers’ imaginations with faster development and better user experience.  A fresh-start was needed at the top-end and it’s come just in time…

–

Update: These changes were hinted-at in August according to this Techcrunch piece covering an article by the German Financial Times.

Tagged as: 2012, maemo, N-Series, Nokia, Symbian

  • Im not surprised really. That is normal
  • Nokia, watch out for Android phones!
  • Compare S60 to Android, or perhaps even iPhone's OS. There is very little room for innovation. And besides, internally, within Nokia, Symbian is referred as shit for some odd reason. I think it makes sense for Nokia to try and see the Market response on Maemo-based phones and NSeries sounds like an ideal test ground!
  • i like nokia i am using n97
  • radyo_dinle
    Looks like you are doing a great job!
  • everploeg
    @applfan

    I completely agree with the facts that you cite. Unfortunately for Nokia, these facts are becoming less important, because the basis of competition in mobile has shifted from Nokia's strengths in manufacturing (lower cost) and industrial design, to the availability of third party apps.

    Ovi represents a laudable effort to try to enable third party apps, but this doesn't appear to be an effort that is going to be successful. Going to Maemo doesn't directly solve the lack of apps problem in the short term, and by the time it could do so, they would be hopelessly far behind iPhone and Android.

    iPhone is clearly winning the apps game so far, but it doesn't seem likely that Nokia could get access to that OS (it would be an incredibly smart thing for Apple to do, but completely out of character for that company). Also, many have argued (and I agree) that the Android open approach is more likely to succeed in the fullness of time than the iPhone closed approach.

    So, it would seem that Nokia's best opportunity is to back Android.

    You can read my blog posting on the subject, or just flame me here :-)
    http://verploeg.com/PocketWatch/?p=145
  • everploeg
    Wow. Supporting two distinct OS's seems like a heroic undertaking, even for Nokia. It's not just the engineering resources consumed by the twin efforts, but also the confusion it creates in the developer community, among potential customers and carriers, and internally.

    It seems odd that Nokia doesn't just declare that they will standardize on Android. It would save them a ton of money, and give them access to applications--which has become the basis upon which people are selecting handsets--and address the huge Symbian diversity issues that have made Ovi so hard to pull off.
  • juliancooling
    I think Google (the IT company) and Whitehall (the bureaucracy) use the word "open" in much the same way. The end users of both organisations trust Google's definition of "open systems" in the same way as Whitehall's "open government". I am happy to use both but I would read the fine print with scepticism (and a lawyer) before signing up to be in business jointly with either.
  • applfan
    "It seems odd that Nokia doesn't just declare that they will standardize on Android. It would save them a ton of money, and give them access to applications"

    Seriously, do you have any idea about the market penetration of Symbian? S60 is due for a demotion, not Symbian. Going to Android will be a dumb move for Nokia who currently owns the market. Why?

    Technology-wise Android offers nothing new. Fragmentation-wise, Android is already showing signs of fragmentation, which is bad news for Android apps down the road (as you mentioned Symbian has been there hence, current focus in Symbian on unifying everything thru a UI framework like Qt). Differentiation-wise Android is a bad choice since what we are currently seeing is a host of devices on Android from multiple manufacturers but no key differentiators to sway users to one device or another - everything is Google oriented. Going forward this will be an major issue. OTOH Nokia has a competitor to Android (in terms of UI, apps etc.) which is Maemo. It is a key differentiator which will set Nokia devices apart from Android clones (I am not including any of the new UI frameworks on Symbian coz they are not public). Functionality-wise under the hood both Symbian and Maemo are better currently. All-in-all none of the key requirements for a smartphone platform are met by Android in context of Nokia. Sure, Android is great for other manufacturers who dont have their software/appstore/platform eco-systems (which is where Google is smart about how it set up the OHA) but Nokia is not one of those since they own the entire pipeline right now, from hw, sw, manufacturing to distribution and are the dominant player in the game.

    Nokia gains absolutely nothing by using Android.
  • Spot on... The news here isn't that 'Symbian is bad' it's that Nokia sees N-Series as something beyond smartphones and has developed something appropriate to support that ambition... They've been referring to devices like the N97 as 'computers' for some time now, but that's been a very generous description. With Maemo it feels more accurate.
  • And how is symbian being thrown on to a corner with the on coming of Maemo , New Phones of the N Series will be coming out and the symbian V5 version which is the latest will be worked on
  • I guess, you need to scroll back up and read the post over (and over, and over over) again. No offense meant!
  • it must be stable enough before Nokia will change OS since Maemo was known this OS for Internet Tablet only... >_<
  • bitflung
    its funny how "Symbian’s greatest strength, it’s legacy and maturity, has begun to look like an Achilles heal as newer platforms have captured consumers’ imaginations", but these same consumers think that Maemo, a linux OS, is somehow new and fresh.

    Linux, the monolithic kernel that it is, is just a clone of a very old, antiquated technology. I'm not arguing against linux, I think it's great and has plenty of life left in it: but whatever strength, elasticity, versatility, name-your-buzzword linux has so too does Symbian. FOR THE SAME REASONS as a matter of fact. With one small difference: Symbian is a microkernel. Microkernels are inherently more well suited for constrained system resources. So, ahh, well - Symbian may have been a better choice were it not so unpopular.

    It is sad how the idiots of the world get to rule the decision making process with their opinions and the facts don't speak louder than them (don't take insult, I'm not including you - looks to me that you know the strengths of Symbian).
  • No offence taken - I agree with your point...

    I guess the problem is that whilst the Symbian technical approach *should* win on paper, the experience for the end-user is pretty poor and newer platforms (whatever their sins in other departments) have improved on that a lot...

    Nokia are saying that Maemo is intended for 'mobile computing' and assuming that that's what N-Series will mean in future (as video and multimedia specialism moves to X-Series) it could be that Symbian's not a great fit there, but regardless it still needs to improve otherwise it could find itself being replaced in the other ranges too...
  • ‘Maemo Select’ sounds interesting to me. Looking forward to it! But just wondering what are the drawbacks of Symbian S60 that Nokia is moving from its mainstream OS.
  • Compare S60 to Android, or perhaps even iPhone's OS. There is very little room for innovation. And besides, internally, within Nokia, Symbian is referred as shit for some odd reason. I think it makes sense for Nokia to try and see the Market response on Maemo-based phones and NSeries sounds like an ideal test ground!
  • Symbian will still be on the majority of Nokia's mainstream devices, just not the top-end. Right now Symbian's far more mature and suitable for general use, but Nokia clearly plan to get Maemo there too.
  • as with s60 there seems to be heath robinson approach to dev enviroment
    not sure what ide's are available but maemo site suggest you use vi :)


    love or loathe apple, the xcode dev environment/programme is very very good
    and eclipse / android isn't too shabby.


    though i suspect if i dele
  • applfan
    Actually Eclipse has had plugins for maemo development for ages (ESBox etc.). Basically use whatever IDE you want (I prefer Eclipse, not vi! ;-) ), compile your binary and just scp it to the device (The eclipse plugins do that automatically for you and also support on-device debugging). Remember that the devices like N900 are not smartphones - they are computers 1st and then phone (though the phone quality is pretty darn good - I was surprised).

    The setup for the maemo environment was much easier than Xcode/iphone environment - atleast personally.
  • Not surprised really.
  • khertan
    "‘Maemo Select’, the current community-portal for Maemo applications, will initially run alongside Nokia’s Ovi store, which is due to launch for the N900 via a software update next month. However, in the longer term it too will be retired leaving only the Ovi Store as the official Nokia source for free and paid applications promoted on Symbian and Maemo devices."

    look like false rumors
  • Nope, not false rumours - exactly what the lady from Maemo (who's name escapes me) said to Ben and me!
  • I've reported verbatim what the presenter from Maemo said to me in an open discussion with several other people at the N900 meetup in London last night. Which part is false?
  • Neil
    The marketing representative at the London event told me that Symbian "would not be used on N-Series between now and 2012" (quoted, verbatim) and the unspoken point was that it would be reconsidered once Symbian^4 from OSF becomes available as an alternative option to Maemo.

    I think you misheard, or misunderstood, what she was telling you as what you have posted in this blog is entirely incorrect with regard to what I was told, directly, at the London event.
  • Neil,

    All I can report is what I heard. The conversation I'm reporting included other bloggers (including Kip Hakes who's commented above that my write-up is accurate), it is in-line with earlier leaks (such as this from the FT in Germany: http://eu.techcrunch.com/2009/08/11/nokia-ditch...) and has been supported by private conversations with people I trust, but who can't go on-record.

    Nokia certainly could change their mind about strategy between now and 2012 (in fact between now and christmas), but as of now I believe this is their intention.

    Ben
  • Neil
    Perhaps the rep muddled her words either to me or to you and your group (English not being her first language, and after all there are only slight - but crucial - differences between what we both heard) however given the past and future investment planned by Nokia in Symbian and the timelines projected for Symbian^4, I find the version I received and quoted here makes more business and technical sense than to suggest that Nokia intend to ditch Symbian completely by 2012 onwards on their high-end products.
  • I guess we'll have to wait and see, but to me it sounds far more likely that they have a direction of travel defined (phase out Symbian on N-Series) than a firm decision to re-adopt it in 2012.

    If we see another Symbian N-Series before 2012 we'll know who was right :-)
  • symbian isnt being dropped, its will live along side maemo, say N series (& E?) will be maemo, and X, numbered devices will be S60. Though i suspect X will go maemo as its social/media abilitys are way beyond S60. and maybe E will stick with S60. so Symbian and maemo will both exist, its more news that maemo will go into mass market consumer devices as appropiate, rather than the death of S60.
  • What will be interesting will be the impact on developers - how portable will code be between the platforms in real-world use... If you develop a general-use app and want to address users on a range of devices how much extra effort will it be to support both.

    Also, what will happen to the trickle-down of features that happens from N-Series to the other ranges...?
  • fyanardi
    That's the reason Nokia is porting Qt to symbian and migrating maemo to Qt entirely. Using Qt, developers should not worry too much about the underlying platform. As a bonus, Qt is a really nice library to work with.
  • khertan
    I was talking of 'leaving only the Ovi Store as the official Nokia source for free and paid applications promoted on Symbian and Maemo devices'
  • well maemo select is free apps only, so the app eco system needs a paid app outlet. Maemo select will be retired to prevent there being 'app stores'
  • I specifically asked if Nokia wanted to have two different routes to obtain apps for Maemo and whether that would cause problems for them taking it mass market (where it will need to be simple) and was told that Ovi store would ultimately be the only thing on the device... Whether or nor Maemo Select continues to be a resource that geeks can still utilise is a different question.
  • la la la la, nokias worst kept secret
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