In what could only be considered an awkward move, Sharp and Fujitsu have announced that they intend on releasing 11 new phones running the ever-aging Symbian platform, which is primarily utilized by Nokia, who has also recently taken over control of future development of the platform. Nokia has already lost significant market share to Android and iOS, but maybe Nokia knows something we don’t.
While Samsung and Sony Ericsson have abandoned the Symbian platform in favor of Android, the newly shown love by Sharp and Fujitsu shows that these two companies have an agenda. They will either attempt to differentiate themselves from Android and expand upon the Symbian platform or appeal to existing Symbian users primarily in Asia. It could be a smart move in the short term, but the long-term prospects of Symbian still seem grim.
Then again, this could be a sign that Nokia has some big plans for the future of Symbian, which one would expect they do, considering how much ground it needs to make up when compared to the competition. But we will have to wait to see if that is a reality or a pipe dream.
As reported by Reuters
“Fujitsu” not “Fujitsju”
Thanks for pointing out the typo – we corrected this 🙂