New Symbian Phones? Not From Sony Ericsson

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The last of the non-Nokia Symbian-using companies may have just jumped ship. Back in the day, you could count on Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Samsung to make Symbian phones along with Nokia. Symbian is looking mighty old these days when compared to iOS and Android. Samsung and Motorola had jumped ship to Android, and now Sony Ericsson says they have no plans to continue to support the old operating system.

Earlier this week, Sony Ericsson CTO Jan Uddenfeldt told a Swedish newspaper that SE had no plans to continue working with Symbian. When Bloomberg BusinessWeek contacted Sony, a spokesperson reiterated that statement. Aldo Liguori, that spokesman, said:

We have no plans for the time being to develop any new products to the Symbian Foundation standard or operating system.

Ligouri told Bloomberg BusinessWeek that SE doesn’t talk about unreleased products, but SE’s CEO said this month in China that Sony Ericsson wanted to become the #1 Android manufacturer in the world.

Symbian was recently made open-source by the Symbian Foundation. But, in the era of the “touchscreen smartphone”, it seems like Symbian is quickly being replaced by Android as the manufacturer-agnostic software of choice. As I mentioned above, Samsung and Motorola were both Symbian supporters and both have jumped ship to Android.

So, will Nokia jump ship to Android. Doesn’t seem like it. At least for the next six months. Nokia’s (outgoing) smartphone boss Anssi Vanjoki said that hardware manufacturers going to Android were like boys who “pee in their pants for warmth”.