Nokia to Maintain Symbian until 2016 – Elop [Nokia CEO Stephen Elop Says The Company Plans to Maintain & Support Symbian For 5 More Years; No Plans to Abandon a Sinking Ship?]

Posted on TFTS by J. Angelo Racoma on Friday, 27. May 2011 under: Mobile/Cell Phones

Nokia may have chosen the Windows Phone platform over Symbian for its future, but it doesn’t mean the company is abandoning the operating system that’s kept it at the top for so many years.

We earlier reported that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop says the company will keep supporting the platform even though it’s essentially dying out. While the duration was earlier pegged at three years, it seems Symbian users can still get at least five years out of their devices. In an interview aired at the Chinese edition of Nokia Conversations, Elop maintained that Nokia is continuing its investment in Symbian until 2016. “We’re in a period where the investment in Symbian absolutely continues,” he said. “And I know there’s been questions about–so how long does that continue–and we’ve now been very clear about that, that software updates to Symbian devices are expected until at least 2016.”

Elop continues to say that even with its primary focus being on WP7, Nokia expects to deliver software updates until that time, including customer services, applications, and the like. This is in light of all other organizations and groups all but abandoning Symbian, as exemplified by the European Union’s pulling out of the SYMBEOSE project. Still, Nokia is in a good position to keep supporting its Symbian platform. It has nothing to lose, after all, as it seems to be a preferred partner by Microsoft, too, having been promised first dibs at the upcoming fall WP7 update.

Whether it’s 2014 or 2016, we have one question in our minds. Do you think Symbian will continue to be the OS that it is by that time? Or will it be an extinct platform altogether?