A little over a week ago, Nokia killed off the Symbian name, instead calling the platform Nokia Belle and, hopefully, letting it die a swift and unencumbered death. And then yesterday we find out that the very same Symbian, is the most popular mobile platform in the whole wide world.
https://gizmodo.com/symbian-is-dead-5870036
Of course, that’s a position Symbian’s held for months and months, owing to its popularity in parts of Europe and developing markets. But that’s always been the problem with Symbian: broad distribution, sure, but a shoddy product confined—for the most part—to the low end of the market. And while it lives on as Nokia Belle, it’s hard to tell whether the move is one to reenergize through rebranding, or a muted death sentence.
In some ways, Symbian’s continued popularity makes Nokia’s Windows Phone investment an even more impressive gamble; Microsoft’s mobile offering is the most promising we’ve seen in years (this coming from a very happy Lumia user), but it doesn’t take too keen an eye to see that it doesn’t even register on the chart above. [Pingdom]
