30 October 2008

Motorola to ditch Symbian,
bet on Android and Windows Mobile

Motorola Inc. says it will dump the Symbian Ltd. operating system in favor of the Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows Mobile platforms in a bid to simplify its handset line-up in 2009.

The story was initially reported by the Wall Street Journal and I'm not entirely sure why everyone is surprised so much!? Motorola is expected to dump Symbian, especially after UIQ was declared as dead platform by Sony Ericsson's Patrick Olson at the Symbian Smartphone Show last week in London.

This must be a huge disappointment for the Motorola, they bought half of the UIQ company about a year ago and now platform is practically dead, it seems they decided to use a totally wrong strategy and bad investment which usually results with a huge disappointment and therefore I am not surprised at all!

The newspaper wrote that Motorola’s co-chief executive Sanjay Jha is decided to change directions and focus on Google’s Android platform, amid restructuring plans that also include significant layoffs.

"We will no longer offer new devices on Symbian UIQ and our internally developed Linux-Java platform," Jha said. "Our first Android platform is targeted to be on the market for the holiday season 2009. "There's just too much complexity in our operating systems and unit platforms," he told listeners on the conference call.

The dumping of the Symbian platform in 2009 will mean more pain in the short-term for the Moto device team, Jha said, particuarly because it won't be launching Symbian devices it expected to in 2009.

"There is no quick fix here," said Jha. "The first half of next year will be challenging, fewer devices will be released than expected."

The handset boss is predicting fourth-quarter handset revenues and unit shipments to be down compared to the third quarter. The moves to simplify, however, will help to further reduce costs by $600 million in 2009, Jha said.

So it is obviously now that UIQ is dead but I don't think that Motorola will ignore Symbian Foundation and stop to produce phones based on Symbian phones, it will be another bad strategy and another huge mistake!