The 2nd most popular handset vendor, Samsung, announced it will stop supporting the Symbian platform at the end of this year, dealing another blow to the troubled (but still dominant) operating system.
Last week Sony Ericsson was also reported to stop developing smartphones powered by Symbian OS. Nokia, which is still the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer, is now the only top-tier handset manufacturer supporting Symbian.
At the Samsung Mobile Innovator site, the company stated that “Samsung Mobile Innovator will discontinue its Symbian support service from December 31st 2010…. Registration and certification of Symbian applications for the Samsung Apps store will cease from 08:00am on the 31st of December 2010.”
Samsung hasn’t announced any Symbian-based smartphones since last February and is focusing its efforts on the Android and Windows Phone 7 platforms, as well as its own proprietary OS, Bada.
Symbian remains the leading smartphone OS worldwide, controlling 41.2 percent of the global market according to research firm Gartner. A year ago, Symbian-based devices represented 51 percent of the market. Android now accounts for 17.2 percent of the smartphone market, third overall behind Research In Motion’s BlackBerry (19.0 percent) and ahead of Apple’s iOS (14.2 percent).
