Another baseless rumour put to a stop.
I am sure you have heard previous rumours?
1. Microsoft buying the smartphone division of Nokia – May,2011
2. Samsung will buy Nokia – June, 2011
Here comes the latest!
3. No more Symbian! Only one symbian device which is N8′s succcessor – Feb, 2012
According to this new rumour “Nokia is said to be hastening the demise of its legacy Symbian platform, cancelling the development of all but one new Symbian-based device. Although Nokia Belle updates will continue to ship to existing customers, only one new model – a successor to the N8 – will reach the market”
oh and what lead to this conclusion?
“ Key silicon partner ST Ericsson already hinted at the news when giving investors guidance last week. ST Ericsson said that a “very significant decline” in net sales this quarter was to be expected was due in part to the “reduction, in the short term, of new product sales with one of our largest customers.”
ST Ericsson?
Well, ST-Ericsson, a global leader in wireless platforms and semiconductors and have been supplying many parts for Nokia Symbian Phones.
Well, Broadcom makes the GPU, Audio/Video Decoder/Encoder, Bluetooth/wifi modem, Texas Instruments makes the CPU, Nokia makes the Quad-band radio chipset, Display, Battery, 3D HW Accelerator, Speakers, and other tiny parts in it. Leaving all these, the remaining semiconductor materials are of ST Ericsson and it’s supposed to be supplying a major part of Symbian Phones (I yet don’t know which major parts are left)
We know, Nokia is at a loss, because of lack of innovation leading to non-competitive phones in the market. Symbian sales have dropped down no doubt and this has effected ST Ericsson as well. ST-Ericsson has posted $231 million loss in its fourth quarter. ST Ericsson has posted these results in 2012-01-26.
It’s perfectly fine till that. But what has ST Ericsson’s loss because of Nokia has anything to do with Nokia N8′s successor being the last symbian device?
These are two seperate companies as a whole and Nokia is further using ST-Ericsson’s “Nova-Thor” CPU’s in low-cost WP7 phones and maybe in upcoming Symbian dual cores.
Suddenly this rumour springs up and all blogs go crazy from making this “Rumour” to a “Fact” (It’s like majority of bloggers are Nokia Employees and some may even have a time machine!?!?)
Edlar has failed to keep up his reputation who has generated some awesome rumours in the past. (See Rumour 1 and 2 mentioned above) Now here comes the third one and well, this one doesn’t seem to come from Edlar (for obvious reasons). Seems like the “S” and the “A” team are trying hard to convince people to leave the Nokia’s Boat which is now more Rising than Sinking.
Here are some recent facts (Not rumours)
1. Nokia is back to their No.1 spot of being the largest smartphone manufacturer.
2. Nokia is back to it’s position of being the most trusted brand in India
3. Symbian still the top mobile OS for 2011
Symbian started at 30% at the beginning of the year, but it rocketed to 33.58% in June. This dipped in October to 29% but went back up to 33.63%
Nokia’s 19.6 million smartphones sold in Q4 2011 were Symbian Smartphones. Nokia Lumia sales as said by Nokia was “well over a million” and the remaining product the N9 was not too a best seller. Hence? It’s Symbian that has been keeping up Nokia even in 2011 and what we hear in Feb, 2012 that there will be only one symbian device released?
You have probably got it by now how fake and baseless this rumour was.
Well, one more thing, How can N8′s successor being the “last” symbian device be accepted even when Nokia N8′s successor has a questionable existance. (It’s a rumour again)
Nokia already confirmed again that Symbian Support lasts till 2016. Nokia supports a phone with updates for a minimum of 2 years. So even if 2016 is the dead end, the last Symbian phone will come at around 2013-2014. So will we be get nothing in 2012 and 2013 running Symbian?
What about Symbian Carla?
Do you think Nokia is investing in Symbian Carla only for the older symbian phones and the three 1Ghz Belle phones? Nokia always comes up with some new products when it releases a major update and Nokia is investing all those money just for one phone? N8′s successor? Leave apart Symbian Donna.
Nokia ditching Symbian that soon with just one more device to sell will not only cause immense loss to Nokia but also to those million Symbian Users or should I say Customers of Nokia.
So, this is I hope an end to your questions regarding this rumour and well, Nokia has done mistakes in the past doesn’t mean it will continue to do those in future. Symbian will anyhow fade away with time but 2012 will not be the date and neither will N8′s successor be it’s grave.
“So if the fat lady isn’t yet singing for Symbian, she has taken a deep breath.” Nope, She just has started singing more beautiful and loud!
