14 DAY TRIAL // Leading mobile phone maker Nokia is already known to be moving towards newer flavors of the Symbian platform with the handsets that it will deliver to the market during the ongoing year, and the move is confirmed, it seems. Michael Hsu, general manager of Nokia Taiwan, has reportedly stated that the company aims at launching the first smartphones that will run under Symbian^3 during the third quarter of the ongoing year, and that the first devices powered by Symbian^4 will land either in late 2010 or in the beginning of 2011, reports DigiTimes.
According to the news site, the Finnish handset vendor won't come to the market with smartphones running under Symbian^2, but will jump directly to the newer version 3 of the platform. However, it seems that the smartphones running under Symbian^3 won't be the only devices the company plans on bringing to shelves this year, as “Maemo 6-based products” are also included in the company's lineup for the second half of the ongoing year (though the company stated last year that only one Maemo 6-powered phone would arrive to the market in 2010).
“The Symbian version 4 is believed to be based on the Qt cross-platform application development framework developed by Trolltech, which Nokia acquired in June 2008, said industry sources. The Qt will allow software developers to develop application software supporting Symbian and Maemo platforms simultaneously, added the sources. For terminal end products, Nokia will continue to offer Maemo-based mobile computing devices, Symbian S60-based smartphones as well as Symbian S40-based feature phones, with the prices for Symbian S60-based models likely to be more competitive in 2010, Hsu said,” DigiTimes reports.
It seems that Nokia is set to make Symbian S60-based smartphones account for around 55 percent of the devices it will ship by 2011, and that Symbian S40-powered devices will account for 35 percent of the shipments. Additionally, 10 percent of the volumes will be represented by Maemo-based phones, at least this is what “sources familiar with Nokia's product roadmap” reportedly stated. For what it's worth, this means either that the company has high hopes for the Maemo-powered smartphones it will launch, or that they will come in a number large enough to account for such a large percentage of its shipments.