AT&T to Adopt Symbian Exclusively?

Future AT&T-branded smartphones may rally around the soon-to-be-open-source Symbian operating system.

It looks as if Symbian’s 49.8 percent stranglehold on the smartphone operating system market might be about to get even stronger, with rumors indicating that AT&T might be considering Symbian for all future AT&T-branded phones. AT&T’s director of next-generation services, Roger Smith, hinted at the choice at a Symbian event in San Francisco on Thursday.

According to Macworld, AT&T foresees smartphones becoming a much larger part of its business in the future, and wants to choose a single operating system to run across all AT&T-branded smartphones. The effort would not affect the iPhone, since AT&T sees it at as a distinct product that leverages its network, not a true AT&T product.

Because Nokia recently acquired the Symbian operating system and plans to make it open source, it would seem to be an ideal candidate for the transition. Smith called it “a very credible and likely candidate” for AT&T’s choice as a unified operating system.

Though AT&T has relied heavily on Java in the past, Smith also made it clear that it would play less of a role in the future, citing its lack of fine hardware control and the carrier’s own admitted mismanagement of it.