James Rosewell writes:
Nokia held their Developers Day during day 1 of Mobile World Congress 2011. Rich Green, new CTO at Nokia, kicked off the event by talking about the future of Symbian. In a nutshell here are the key facts:
- 150 million Symbian based phones will be shipped in the future.
- QT (pronounced cute) the recently announced development environment for Symbian will be supported but not developed further.
- QT will not be ported to Windows Phone.
- Java will play no future part of the strategy.
- MeeGo is “fully staffed” but Nokia have not decided what to do with the code after release.
Developers with established products in other markets who can make a return on investment from the installed base of Symbian handsets should consider developing with QT and Symbian. Everyone else should look at Windows Phone 7.
Importantly for Nokia its mapping technologies are going to be used by Microsoft beyond mobile. Expect to see NavTec powered Bing maps in the not too distant future. Other services such as billing and application stores appear candidates for inclusion in more Microsoft products.
Given the conversation leading to this agreement between Nokia and Microsoft could only have started in earnest 6 months ago Nokia have been extremely clear about their plans. QT for Symbian become available in autumn 2010 and its life has already been fully mapped out. How many over platforms can we have so much certainty over?
