Samsung Abandons Symbian

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Symbian has been shedding manufacturers rather quickly the past few weeks. Symbian (“The Atari 2600 of mobile phones” according to Windows journalist Paul Thurrott) was supported by such top-tier manufacturers like Samsung, Motorola and Sony Ericsson. Now, all three have dropped Symbian for Android’s shores. Motorola has been successful with their Android offerings. Sony Ericsson admitted that they want to be the #1 Android manufacturer in the world, and now Samsung is killing dev support for Symbian on their phones.

Developers were given 30-day notice this week before Samsung announced it will close down Lab.dev, a virtual emulator that allows developers to test their Symbian programs on a virtual Samsung phone. But they’re not stopping there. By the end of the year, Samsung will be closing the Symbian developers forum on their dev page and will be removing all Symbian development documentation from their website. If you want more information, developers are encouraged to head over to the Symbian Foundation website and their forums and documentation.

The last Symbian phone released by Samsung was the Omnia HD (pictured above) – a 3.7-inch phone with a 600MHz processor that came out last year from the Korean tech giant. Since then, Samsung has hedged its bets on the OS space. They’ve got Android phones coming, Windows Phone 7 devices coming, and they’re working on their own mobile OS – Bada OS.

What does this mean for Symbian and the new version of Symbian that launches with the Nokia N8, Symbian^3?