Nokia World, a two-day event in London, takes place next week. Before I pack up to attend, here’s a roundup of what I expect from the company and its leadership, which just today replaced its president and CEO. Will we finally see a MeeGo smartphone?
The new Nokia N8 has the dubious distinction of being both the first and the last N-series handset to run Symbian^3 — new high-end devices will run on MeeGo. A product strategy in constant transition isn’t one that will attract developers or customers to Nokia.
Qt isn’t the only game in town when it comes to programming software for Symbian 3 devices. Symbian apps can also be developed using web standards of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I spoke with Larry Berkin from the Symbian Foundation on what this means for developers.
Nokia today unveiled the N8, its first handset that uses both the Symbian 3 operating system and the Qt cross-platform application framework. With the new operating system, Nokia hopes to reverse market share losses and prove that it can still reign atop the smartphone world.
Nokia is still on track to deliver its vastly overhauled smartphone operating system in Symbian 3 in the second half of this year. With increased competition worldwide and competitors maturing their own platforms, Nokia needs to step on the gas pedal and accelerate delivery.
