Just when you thought you’d seen the last of Symbian, the operating system staggered back onto the scene today in the form of Symbian Belle along with three new phones Nokia 600, 700, 701 and Essence.
Nokia, ever the optimist has described the new devices as “world-leading smartphones,” and the firm threw in a new Bluetooth headset to boot.
The biggest feature of the new OS is its support for NFC payments, though Nokia has also souped up the OS interface somewhat to include six customizable home screens, resizable widgets, Toggle widgets, pull down notifications tray and easier multitasking.
It’s still Symbian though, and the question many are asking is why Nokia would bother, especially with Nokia Windows Phones just around the corner.
“Nokia still shows total commitment to Symbian,” said Francisco Jeronimo from IDC, saying the operating system continued to play a key transitional role between Nokia’s past and the company’s future.
Jeronimo said that releasing Symbian Belle so rapidly after Symbian Anna also demonstrated that Nokia was razor focused on execution. “To launch two versions of a platform within periods of six months also demonstrates that Nokia can be faster than its competitors in meeting customer expectations. While Google and Apple are releasing new versions within approximately twelve month timeframes, Nokia is doing it within six months,” he said.
IDC still ranks Nokia as the world’s third biggest smartphone player after iOS and Android, saying it had 15.5% market share by the end of second quarter 2011.
Jeronimo said he felt Symbian Belle was “an extraordinary improvement” from what Symbian was a year ago. “For the first time, the user interface and user experience of Symbian Belle significantly close the gap with Android and iOS user interfaces and will help to attract the current Symbian users to the new Windows Phones to be launched this year. If Nokia had launched this new Symbian Belle one year ago, the company would have remained the worldwide smartphone market leader,” he said.
The price of the new Nokia devices may also prove attractive, becoming among the cheapest devices running Ghz processors.
Not all analysts were as enthusiastic, however. “Nokia really had no choice,” Jack Gold told RCR. “The firm needs a place holder until WP hits the market. It has to at least stay somewhat competitive. So it would be even worse if Nokia didn’t offer something in the interim. I don’t think it will win any new customers, but it would be worse if the firm did nothing to help its competitiveness.”
Check out the launch videos below:
