Well, it looks like the end of the line for the S60.
It happened a little while back, whilst I wasn’t noticing, according to wikipedia. The story is “In February 2011, Nokia announced [they will use] Windows Phone 7 as their Primary OS [instead of] Symbian.”
I could be wrong but it does look like Symbian (S60) will fade into obscurity. The article goes on to say that Nokia shed 3000 Symbian staff to Accenture on 29 Apr 11. Accenture must be getting something out of the deal; but it looks like a nice way to give ex-Nokia staff a way to get involved in other development lines.
There is still some potential. Nokia were open-sourcing Symbian / S60 so perhaps we’ll see a dedicated team of enthusiasts supporting it. The catch is, whilst open-source developers are keen, very capable, and often produce better products; their focus is rarely on commercialising the software. It is commendable but it doesn’t result in market leadership. They really are a great bunch of people but, for all the wrong reasons, we are likely to see the mobile phone market become: Apple, Android, and Windows (not in any order).
It will make it easier to develop phone apps and it will be easier to find something that works on your phone. So – despite my sadness – there are pluses too.
