Sony Ericsson Pulls Plug On Symbian, Leaves Nokia Solo

Sony Ericsson is gearing up for a comeback in the mobile world, and rather than trying to make friends with every software maker in the market, they're making the necessary decisions to focus their product lines and hopefully give the consumers exactly what they want. And that means getting rid of Symbian support. Symbian is a mobile OS that has been primarily used by Nokia for years, but a few other phone companies installed Symbian on their hardware. But as Nokia's market share has slipped and they have all but vanished in the U.S. market, Sony Ericsson probably realized that it was time to move on.


SE has been using Android on select smartphones for some time now, and by withdrawing from Symbian, it really shows how out of favor the operating system has fallen. In fact, Nokia is now the only phone maker left who is actively supporting Symbian, and the N8 and C7 have recently shipped with the latest version (Symbian^3).


Not everyone has given up on Symbian though. Some analysts are suggesting that the new version of Symbian could catch on in select markets, but only if Nokia overhauls it again to better compete with the advanced software available from Apple, Google and (shortly) Microsoft. The real question is whether or not Nokia pulls the same plug later on. Will Nokia finally switch to Android or some other operating system? Or continue to the lone wolf pushing Symbian? Time will tell.