Nokia: Future of Symbian Application Development – Bright or Doomed?

Did you ever thought of mobile application development, without the Symbian name being part of it? I didn't. But last year, Nokia removed the the Symbian from its new devices and added Windows Phone 7 operating system in them. As per the sources, Nokia also carried out huge layoffs of in-house Symbian developers all across the world, thus completely discontinuing the development operations. Needless to say, it was heart-shattering for Symbian Belle (as it was called) lovers.


But, it doesn't mean they really kicked the poor Symbian to the extinction completely, just like a Facebook status “Its Complicated”. This is due to the fact that, Nokia is operating well in the areas where Symbian is still popular. The platform may be not popular anymore in the US and western Europe, but still working fine in the economies like India, China, Turkey and Russia. And for Nokia to overlook these lucrative markets and carry out the complete removal of Symbian application development, is not possible.

The latest Symbian operating system, driving the Nokia Symbian devices is the Symbian Belle. It took over Symbian Anna last year, in order to amend and modernize the Symbian experience. The Nokia developers carried out major changes in the OS and some of them are:

Free-form, differently-sized, live widgets: A wide range of widgets are re-structured, in-order to create personalization. The list of widgets include clock, email, music player, favourite contacts and the calendar.

Extra home-screens: Symbian belle developers increased the number of home-screen from three to size, so as to increase the options for the users.

Improve navigation: Tweaking the the navigation and options bar, Symbian Developers made the looks sporty and modern.

More apps: Nokia added whole new series of utility business apps from Microsoft like Lync (IM for businesses, like Microsoft Communicator), Sharepoint, OneNote, Exchange ActiveSync and PowerPoint Broadcaster.

So, even after Nokia launches Lumia series with Windows Phone 7 Operating system, there’s lots to look for in the existing Symbian phones (Nokia N8, E7, C7, C6-01, X7, E6 and 500). Therefore, it can be said that the future still has hopes for Symbian belle.