If what bloggers heard from Maemo marketing team at yesterday’s N900 meet-up at London is true, we’ll see Linux-based Maemo replace Symbian as the operating system by 2012. Why not? S60 is growing old, Nokia is losing its ground for iPhone and Android powered phones in US and Europe. Symbian is falling short of “goodies” to fight its competition.
Nokia’s official response to this leak was “Any speculation on what our 2012 roadmap, including operating systems and product branding, are completely premature”. Considering the fact that Nokia spent $410 million to buy the remaining share of Symbian and loaned out another $630 million to improve the operating system, such a statement was greatly anticipated, keeping share-holder’s sentiments in mind.
Nokia seems to be impressed with the response their latest Maemo powered N900 is receiving from consumers and bloggers. It makes perfect sense for them to play around and try new opportunities. NSeries looks like an ideal test ground for Nokia to experiment Maemo OS and try winning the market share back from iPhone and other bling-bling Android phones.
Nonetheless, I don’t see Symbian dying anytime sooner or later. Not at least with such a large footprint of consumers, developers and applications. ESeries and XSeries will continue to breed using Symbian and Nokia will support both operating systems with Ovi Store and Maemo Select. Positively speaking, by 2012, if the world doesn’t end, we’ll see Maemo marketplace filled with applications to make it a mainstream success.
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