Nokia phasing out Symbian OS- should I still buy Nokia phone with Symbian OS?

greenhouse1234

I was going to buy new nokia smartphone, looking around found that nokia is ditching its very own Symbian OS!!!

here is the link:

http://tinyurl.com/6yb52v2

should I buy new nokia smartphone with OS which will have no future updates...no support...goin to wall altogether?

will thats mean all nokia phones will be gone soon from shops!!!

any thoughts or suggestions??

Regards

srsly78

No don't get one, everyone ditched Nokia a long time ago.

Venom

greenhouse1234 wrote: »

I was going to buy new nokia smartphone, looking around found that nokia is ditching its very own Symbian OS!!!

here is the link:

http://tinyurl.com/6yb52v2

should I buy new nokia smartphone with OS which will have no future updates...no support...goin to wall altogether?

will thats mean all nokia phones will be gone soon from shops!!!

any thoughts or suggestions??

Regards

Nokia ditched Symbian from its smartphones in favour of Win Phone 7 which they should have out by the end of the year. While the current range of Symbian phones wont just vanish over night, judging from past experience I don't see Nokia investing much more into supporting existing Symbian phones.

Checking out the Android or Apple range of phones would be you're best bet tbh.

coylemj

greenhouse1234 wrote: »

will thats mean all nokia phones will be gone soon from shops!!!

No but the only section of the market where Nokia will continue to operate will be at the bottom end which is populated by cheap, low-margin, low-function phones, that's why their share price is dropping faster than a stone.

Nokia turned their noses up at Android because they said they couldn't protect their margins and differentiate their handsets from the opposition if they didn't have a unique OS - that policy doesn't seem to have done Samsung or HTC any harm.

The Ovi Store is a complete joke, Symbian was pretty much dead even before the new guy at Nokia said that they were signing up with Microsoft, that was just the nail in the coffin.

To answer your question, you would want to be completely bonkers to buy a Nokia smartphone.

Daegerty

Sh1t move for Nokia

If they developed the N900 OS more they would have been grand but they mothballed it.

Even in the past few years they've done the dog on Symbian.

Tis been 6 years since I stopped using Windows on my computers, fat chance I'll buy a phone with it.

kirving

Nokia were right to not to go with Android in my opinion. Look at the amount of crappy Android phones out there, they turn me of the whole "ecosystem" when I see them. They're awful.

Nokia have to be different to be better. Andoid has had a meteoric rise in popularity(which few predicted I think) and HTC et al have been doing very well out of it, but Nokia don't want to be just another hardware manufacturer, anyone can do that.

I really wanted Nokia to invest heavily in Symbian, I know the talent is there when I see some of the stuff that has come out of BetaLabs, it's up there with anything iOS and Android has. This is too limited though, they needed an total overhaul of the OS. Not that there's anyting wrong with it, it's just not as polished as iOS.

Nokia were too late, they (rightly) shyed away from rubbish resistive touchscreens, but once the technology improved they were left flailing.

I hope that Nokia Windows Phone will have something different, to the rest of the WP7 handsets that sets them apart. Nokia are bringing a lot to the party and hopefully with Microsofts enevitibility behind them, they can really bring about change.

---

In response to the OP, I have an N8 and I love it. The hardware is amazing, loads of features you won't find on an iPhone. Yes, the software isn't quite as smooth as the others, but it is still extremely capable.

Someone above refered to the Ovi Store as a joke. I have an app for anything I want. Maybe not the same range of apps, no, but a lot of the big name stuff is there alright.

coylemj

Kevin Irving wrote: »

Nokia were right to not to go with Android in my opinion. Look at the amount of crappy Android phones out there, they turn me of the whole "ecosystem" when I see them. They're awful.

Share performance since Jan 1, 2008: Nokia -72%, HTC +163%.

That means that if you invested 10,000 in each company on Jan 1, 2008, the Nokia shares today would be worth 2,764 while the HTC shares would be worth 26,341.

So if you could turn back the clock to the beginning of 2008, you'd still invest your nest egg in Nokia and not HTC because Nokia were 'right not to go with Android'?

Didn't think so!

kirving

I agree with you from a profit point of view, the smart money is on Android right now. I don't like it though, and for Nokia to even have a chance of succeding a few years down the line, they need to offer something different to the competition.

coylemj

Kevin Irving wrote: »

I agree with you from a profit point of view, the smart money is on Android right now. I don't like it though, and for Nokia to even have a chance of succeding a few years down the line, they need to offer something different to the competition.

Well getting into bed with Bill Gates certainly won't save them. There is a huge resistance to Microsoft making any inroads into the mobile device market, they have tried umpteen times and failed thanks to consumer resistance.

Nobody wants to see the situation with the PC market replicated in the handset market where one company dominates by having >80% of the OS footprints and thus the ability to crush anyone who tries to muscle in on their turf by competing with their core applications. Think MS Office and look at what happened to Lotus 1-2-3 and Wordperfect, both leading applications which Microsoft saw off by predatory pricing and downright sabotage. Steve Jobs is no saint but at least he isn't ramming his own apps down our throats, there is a pretty level playing field in the iTunes store.

Corporate users in many cases have no choice but to go Blackberry, everyone else who wants a smartphone with a decent catalogue of apps. will go for either iPhone or Android, everyone else is going to get squeezed out.

jay93

To be honest Nokia would have been better off with Android on their devices they just screwed themselves up by not doing this.

Symbian is a horrible OS IMO very slow and unresponsive at best.

I think Nokia are wasting their time using WP7 only if they had a few android devices aswell they would become more popular.

Hell they could even keep symbian alive and improve on it greatly. companys are getting too lazy lately to be honest!

So a mix of Android,WP7,Symbian OS's on their mobiles would increase market share alot .

They seem more focused on making very low end simple phones.

KrisW

Nokia went to their customers, and asked them what they wanted, and their customers said "Not Android".

Remember, you're not Nokia's customers - O2, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Orange are Nokia's customers. The operators don't like to have one manufacturer holding them to ransom: Nokia going with Android would have given Google about 60--70% of the world market, and that's not good for anyone in the long run (having 60--70% of the smartphone market is what left Symbian in the mess that it's only now getting out of).

On the original question, Symbian will be around for another two years definitely, beyond that it's hard to tell.

If you plan on keeping your phones for longer than three years, maybe look elsewhere, but only Nokia or Apple support their devices for this long.

coylemj

KrisW wrote: »

(having 60--70% of the smartphone market is what left Symbian in the mess that it's only now getting out of).

Excuse me, how did 'having 60-70% of the smartphone market' get Nokia into the mess they're in? Surely if they had that much of the market they could have persuaded people to develop decent applications?

strecker

There is NO reason to NOT get a Nokia, and do not believe the "everyone ditched Nokia" bs...
The N8 sold over 4 million times in Q4 2010 - beating the Samsung Galaxy S and countless other Android phones.
The C7 is very successful as well; even in the USA it scores okay in reviews.

The E6 is getting good reviews.
Nokia confirmed new Symbian phones throughout 2011/12.
They are contractually bound to support handsets software-wise for another 2 years. They will MOST CERTAINLY not 'ditch' Symbian, before they know where wp7 is taking them.
There are many 'reports' circulating that distort what is really going on - even the Financial Times referred to the MS deal as a 'hostile takeover by stealth'

Terms like marketshare, user base, sales and profits etc are deliberately used vaguely and often incorrectly.
Often it is ignored to mention who quoted analysts really are - usually they work for shareholders and banks. Not for end-consumers. Famous poster boys Gartners are known to sell 'trends'. Microsoft have been caught paying them. Go figure

I work in the tech review 'scene' and a lot of nonsense is regurgitated for Google hits, not for illumination.
I am not a Nokia fanboy by any definition.

One of the high priests of 'Nokia is dead' is Russian Blogger Eldar Murtazin. It IS a fact that he lied about the N8. He also said there wouldn't be a Google Nexus - that was just an Apple rumour to annoy Google's handset alliance. He also claimed LG were NOT working on a MeeGo handser 48 hours before LG confirmed they have a Meego smartphone prototype... Go figure.

Nokia was named most trusted western brand in China...you know, that 'little' market not so long ago. India, another little market has over 200000 stores selling and servicing Nokia devices. There will be support for Nokia symbian and s40 devices well into the future.
Everything else is bull****.

strecker

coylemj wrote: »

Excuse me, how did 'having 60-70% of the smartphone market' get Nokia into the mess they're in? Surely if they had that much of the market they could have persuaded people to develop decent applications?

Gravity is one of the best twitter apps on any OS - even Apple boys at Engadget rate it one of the best. SPB's mobile shell started was on Symbian before it was on Android. Skype and Opera Mini are much better on Symbian than on Android.... 80% of iOS and Android apps are used ONCE - that figure has been reconfirmed in various studies. Quantity and quality
A lot of the topselling iOS and Android apps are available for Symbian, or are not needed because Symbian phones have the function built in. Steve Litchfield published a detailed analysis of the top apps, and others confirmed his findings.
The only area where Symbian is behind is high end games - although, hey, Angry Birds on the N8 is no worse than on the iPhone.

srsly78

Cool Kool-Aid strecker. Nokia themselves don't even agree with you, otherwise they wouldn't have ditched their platforms.

strecker

srsly78 wrote: »

Cool Kool-Aid strecker. Nokia themselves don't even agree with you, otherwise they wouldn't have ditched their platforms.

can you not read or is it that you do not want to?
There is a difference between preparing a phase-out and 'ditching'!
They are releasing 12 Symbian phones this year, plus 28 S40 devices. They will not know how wp7 until 2013/14, while, in the meantime they HAVE to support S^3, S60, series 40 etc... Do you believe if the wp7 and 7.5 deal fails, they will just pack in and set the 400 million + userbase on a bandwagon to Google?
Talking about Kool Aid - how's the Google Apple juice?
Next time you read Engadget and Gizmodo and BGR, check their 'sources'...

srsly78

Eh yes they are ditching it, spin it however you like.

Btw, everyones kool aid tastes better than Nokias

strecker

srsly78 wrote: »

Eh yes they are ditching it, spin it however you like.

Btw, everyones kool aid tastes better than Nokias

Even if, as you so brilliantly proved, they are ditching it - the OP is wondering about the near future.
We haven't even seen the 1GHz Symbians that are in development...
But hey - don't let me keep you from finally finishing level 2 of iFart

srsly78

Nokia users are understandably irate, as demonstrated by Stecker.

hardCopy

strecker wrote: »

We haven't even seen the 1GHz Symbians that are in development...

Isn't that part of the problem?

KrisW

Excuse me, how did 'having 60-70% of the smartphone market' get Nokia into the mess they're in? Surely if they had that much of the market they could have persuaded people to develop decent applications?

You don't persuade developers to write for you - they decide themselves where the money is. Apple have the money-spending customers; Nokia used to, but back then, there was no large-scale sales model for phone applications, and no real awareness of needing applications at all.

By the way, Apple never persuaded their developers to "develop decent applications" - it was the other way round in fact. It was only pressure from Apple's independent developers that forced Apple to open the iPhone SDK at all (something that is forgotten now, but originally "apps" could only be HTML widgets).


As for the 70% being bad: Ever wonder why NTL's customer service is so ****? Or why MS Windows lagged behind MacOS despite Microsoft's huge revenues? Having a monopoly, or a near-monopoly, means that a company stops improving its product, and looks for other, easier ways to increase profits. Plus, if you've already got 70% of the market, the chances are that the remaining 30% will NEVER buy your product no matter how good you make it, so why chase them and risk losing part of the 70% that DO like you?

There's a diminishing return on product investment, because over a certain marketshare, customers will continue to buy your products becuase it's what everyone else buys - against that backdrop, it's hard to justify a software improvement, when there are easier, less risky ways to increase margins (like the 8800 series). Doing this reduces the risk of being wiped out by a bad product (think what would happen to Apple if the next iPhone was a failure - they have no plan , but it makes a company vulnerable to a technology shift (Microcomputers vs IBM), or unexpected competition (Japanese vs US auto industry) or commoditisation of their product (budget airlines, PC clones, off-the-shelf GSM/3G phones).

srsly78

Because developers are sick of Nokia's bull**** flipflopping for the last 5 years. Do not want.

Nokia: Hey everyone come and develop for our cool symbian/maemo/meego platform!!! It's awesome!!
Developers: Hmmm ok, let's give this a go.
Nokia: hahah FOOL YOU so much! We are pulling the plug now! All your work has been wasted!
Devlopers: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

KrisW

Three 4chan memes in one post. oh dear.

srsly78

Would you rather I did it with pictures? -> fu.jpg

KrisW

Nah, it's just that it undermines your (valid) point, and makes you sound like a fifteen-year-old troll, which you aren't.

srsly78

I reserve the right to take the piss while still being correct. -> srs.jpg

greenhouse1234

Well Guys
thanks for all your replies.

ummmm...I was just thinking, those were the days: playing 'snake' game on nokia 3120 in buses, airports, trains!!
and then, new phones came and all that snake fun gone...

myself and my partner stopped using nokia phone about two years ago. dont see around many friends using nokia either. and now sure we ll not be using nokia again for another two years till new 'Nokiwin' comes out!

anyways made my mind, going for iphone 4 White
has to wait one week as Three do the best deal in town on iphone and they'r out of stock of white ones, till next week.:D

Good luck to nokia. hopely they ll listen to their customer!

srsly78

I hear the white iphone is twice as good as the black one, and it even prints out legal tender euro notes!!! So much better than Nokia!

Don't get an iphone for the love of god :rolleyes:

greenhouse1234

@srsly78. thanks for advice..

At the moment I m using iphone 3GS running IOS4, hence was thinking if something is better than OS4, didnt want to hold same OS in my hand with new phone.

friend of mine having SE galaxy S and he is jealous about iphone and saying Android's market is messy, but iphone's app store is well organised and with better apps.

i never use android phone yet.

I personally like iphone apps especially when it is JB! you see what u can do with your iphone.

Well now I can see with iphone I always able to get new apps, support etc. where as in nokia just keep the nokia for two years and dnt expect any new apps or support!

srsly78

Android vs iPhone is a massive flamewar topic and would drag this thread off-topic (see how I am behaving myself?). Thread's topic ofc being how terrible Nokia is.

Daegerty

srsly78 wrote: »

I hear the white iphone is twice as good as the black one, and it even prints out legal tender euro notes!!! So much better than Nokia!

Don't get an iphone for the love of god :rolleyes:

Sounds great until you find out the cartridge costs 150e and only prints 10 notes.

and the lad making aftermarket cartridges was just shot by Steve Jobs' own henchmen