Samsung drops Symbian

By Geoff Duncan October 1, 2010

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Samsung—the world’s second-largest maker of mobile phones—has announced it will be dropping support for the Symbian operating system at the end of 2010. The brief note notes the company will stop certifying applications for Samsung Apps store on December 31, and urges developers to post any queries before December 10 so they can be resolved by the end of the year. After that, Samsung advises developers to look to the Symbian Foundation for support.

Samsung instead will be focusing its efforts on handsets running Android and Windows Phone 7. Samsung is one of three device manufacturers expected to have Windows Phone devices ready to go at launch later this month—HTC and LG will also be ready to go with Windows Phone devices. Samsung has recently been pushing its Galaxy line of Android smartphones and will soon be complementing that with an Android-based Galaxy tablet. Samsung, presumably, still has its own Bada mobile operating system percolating.

The move is the second defection from the Symbian camp in the last two weeks: on September 24, Sony-Ericsson announced it would be dropping Symbian to focus on Windows 7 Phone and Android devices.

Neither Sony-Ericsson nor Samsung made tremendous numbers of Symbian phones: the primary Symbian device maker remains Finland’s Nokia. Nonetheless, having high-profile device manufacturers abandoning the platform can’t be a comforting development for the Symbian Foundation.

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Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

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