Nokia: No Android For Us - New CEO

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Nokia has decided to stick to its guns. Even if Symbian were still at the #1 spot in terms of smartphone sales, it’s clearly on the decline, with Android poised to take the lead. New CEO Stephen Elop’s first major executive decision might either make it or break it for the company: continue with Symbian rather than adopt Android.

At various trade shows and conferences in Europe, Nokia continues to tout its Symbian and MeeGo platforms. Nokia’s previous leadership already said “no” to Android, and the new CEO has reaffirmed this stand.

While Symbian continues to lead the smartphone market in terms of sales, analysts predict that Android will be at the top spot come 2011.

The deal-breaker: a viable application marketplace. Android and iOS enjoy an extensive collection of free and cheap apps on their respective Android Market and iTunes Store. Nokia’s OVI seems paltry in comparison. iOS has about 250,000 official apps, while Android has 80,000. Meanwhile, Blackberry has about 10,000. Nokia’s Symbian and Maemo (the precursor to MeeGo), does have application support, but no viable marketplace to speak of.

Nokia does not disclose the number of applications in its Ovi store, but says it gets about 1.8 million downloads per day. Of course, the raw number of apps doesn’t necessarily translate to quality, but it represents how active the development and support community is.