The end of Symbian: Nokia ships last handset with the mobile OS

Two years ago, Symbian was still the #1 mobile operating system. What happened?
by Christopher Null (PC World)

Will the last one to leave please turn out the valot?

This week, Finnish smartphone creator Nokia announced that it had shipped its final handset running the Symbian operating system. As the last company in the world building phones using the Symbian OS, Nokia's withdrawal from the platform means Symbian is now completely defunct.

Symbian's fall from dominance is a tale about which books can (and should) be written. Its origins date to the '80s, but as of 1998, Symbian's existence was formalized when an old PDA company, Psion, changed its name to Symbian and took funding from the major phone manufacturers at the time, including Ericsson and Motorola, to become the official caretaker of the rising mobile OS.

But Nokia has always been Symbian's biggest supporter. The company produced millions of phones running the OS, and the two have always had close ties. Together they dominated the cell phone market throughout the early 2000s; in fact, Symbian remained the top-selling smartphone OS worldwide until late 2010.

That abrupt reversal of fortune was due to a couple of factors: First, the rise of Android and iOS as the dominant phone OSes, sought-after by consumers dropping simplistic handsets in favor of smartphones. Second, Nokia's fall from grace (for much the same reason), along with its fateful 2011 decision to jump into bed with Microsoft and the Windows Phone OS. At that point, the only remaining Symbian backer (and the main contributor to the Symbian code base) said goodbye to the OS, and the writing was on the wall for what would happen next.

Today, Symbian is actually maintained by Accenture, a management consulting company, to which Nokia outsourced development (and shipped off thousands of employees) in 2011. Accenture is supposed to maintain the OS through 2016.

So, what killed Symbian? Complexity, according to Nokia. In reports, the company blamed Symbian's difficult and unfriendly code structure for the extended time it takes for a phone using that OS to be developed. BGR quotes a Nokia spokesperson complaining that a typical Symbian handset required 22 months of development time, compared to less than a year with Windows Phone. In today's environment, when markets are made and lost in a matter of weeks, that just won't fly.

For businesses with large deployments of Symbian smartphones, well, there's probably little need to fret. First, there's no question you've seen this day coming for at least a few years, and chances are you've long since figured out a successor to standardize on. For those stragglers, that deal with Accenture means you'll likely get security updates and other fixes for the next three years--that's plenty of time to decide whether you want to jump to Android, iOS, Windows Phone, or--dare we suggest it--BlackBerry. (The smart money seems to be on moving to Android.)

Catchyit : The Symbian OS has had a good run, take a bow ... goodbye

BlackBerry stems bleeding, but sells 1 million Z10s

Company to launch a midrange model later this year to boost sales
Matt Hamblen
Research In Motion Limited, now doing business as BlackBerry, shipped about 1 million BlackBerry Z10 smartphones during its fiscal fourth quarter.

Anything more than a million in Z10 sales in the quarter can be considered a success for BlackBerry, anything less would have been disappointing, according to Ovum. The Z10 is the first BlackBerry 10 OS device.

BlackBerry shipped a total of 6 million smartphones in the quarter, the company said Thursday as it released its quarterly earnings.

Revenue in its fiscal fourth quarter, which ended on March 2, was approximately $2.7 billion, down 36% from the same quarter of fiscal 2012. Net income from continuing operations for the quarter was $94 million, compared to a net loss of $118 million during 2012.

It had about 76 million subscribers, compared to 79 million during the previous quarter.

The company also announced that co-founder Mike Lazaridis, has decided to retire as vice chairman and a director of the company. Lazaridis co-founded BlackBerry nearly 30 years ago and served as a co-CEO of the company until last year.

"[Lazaridis] revolutionized the mobile communications industry when he invented the BlackBerry and he is widely recognized as one of Canada's greatest innovators," CEO Thorsten Heins said during a conference call presenting the results.

While Lazaridis deserves a lot of credit, he and former co-CEO colleague Jim Balsillie, who retired last year, were unable to reply swiftly to the onslaught from Apple's iPhones and Android-based smartphones.

The announcement of the first shipment figures for the Z10 is a momentous occasion for the company, as BlackBerry tries to claw its way back in the smartphone market, it is too early to draw any major conclusions from the figures, according to analysts. That's in part because the BlackBerry Z10 just went on sale in the U.S. last Friday.

"The Z10 hasn't been on the market for the full quarter, first of all. Second of all, and more significantly, the U.S. launch isn't reflected in the results. Also, the Z10 is just one in what will be a long line of products in 2013," said Geoff Blaber, who leads mobile device software research at CCS Insight.

There also have been supply constraints in markets where the phone has been launched, meaning that even if people wanted to buy them they haven't necessarily been able to, according to market research company Ovum. The second BlackBerry 10 smartphone, the Q10 -- which has the classic BlackBerry physical keyboard -- won't go on sale for some time, so many of the prime candidates for buying a BlackBerry 10 device will be waiting for that, it said via email.

The first true referendum on BlackBerry 10's success or lack thereof will come after the current quarter, Ovum said.

During BlackBerry's conference call, Heins underlined that what the company has done so far is only the beginning. The Q10 will start shipping in April, and the company is working on less expensive BlackBerry 10-based smartphones, as well.

"The midrange BB10, expect that kind of around fiscal midyear in various markets ... We are looking forward to that because we know there is a big demand," Heins said.

The company also continues to investigate potential licensing opportunities and the use of its new platform in areas other than smartphones, including the automotive sector, according to Heins.

Analyst Blaber had another suggestion for a priority: "The first thing it needs to do is to ensure that the existing subscribers base that have been on older BB 7 products start to upgrade, and see the value with BlackBerry 10."