Nokia CEO underscores support for Symbian

02.12.2009
Symbian's future on Nokia's smartphones has been questioned lately, but Nokia's support for the OS remains unchanged for the foreseeable future, CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said during a keynote at the company's Capital Markets Day on Wednesday.

Kallasvuo directly addressed recent blog reports that Nokia is replacing Symbian with the Linux-based Maemo OS on its high-end handsets, leading to speculation about what that means for Symbian's future.

Using Symbian makes good business sense for Nokia, and allows the company to develop cheap smartphones that will democratize the form factor, said Kallasvuo.

Today, the biggest drawback with Symbian is its user interface, which hasn't kept up with touch-based user interfaces on devices like the iPhoneiPhone and phones based on GoogleGoogle's AndroidAndroid OS. Alles zu Android auf CIO.de Alles zu Google auf CIO.de Alles zu iPhone auf CIO.de

In the middle of next year, a new version of Symbian will make a first step toward a better user interface, and this time next year the user experience on Symbian will be a non-issue, according to Kallasvuo.

Upcoming versions of Symbian will reduce clutter, decrease the number of clicks to get to features like music and e-mail and offer a much faster user interface, promised Kai Öistämö, executive vice president of devices at Nokia.

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