Sony Ericsson hints at a future free of Symbian

Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Ltd. has no plans to develop devices for the Symbian operating system. Instead, the device maker appears intent on pushing forward with the Android OS.
Sony Ericsson is no new fan to Google Inc.’s OS of choice, but it sure has anchored its mobile device success on the Symbian OS for much, much longer. While its shift away from Symbian has been a long time coming, it only recently made clear just how done it is with the entire platform.
“We have no plans for the time being to develop any new products to the Symbian Foundation standard or operating system,” Aldo Liguori, a company spokesman told Businessweek.com, confirming remarks made by CTO Jan Uddenfeldt to Swedish technology newspaper Ny Teknik.
Although it’s still the world’s most popular OS in terms of sales, Symbian’s market share has slid in the double digits to 41.2% in the second quarter from 51% a year earlier, according to Gartner Inc.
Sony Ericsson, Samsung Electronics Co. have partnered with Nokia Corp. through its Symbian Foundation to share code, but both have made dramatic shifts away from Symbian of late in favor of their own proprietary systems and Android in particular.