After Friday’s exciting announcement from Nokia and Microsoft®, I thought we should follow-up on an older blog post and talk about what this means for mobile application development. In the blog post "Symbian the Sleeper OS", posted at the end of December 2010, we theorized that since Nokia had retaken ownership of Symbian OS and planned to make major OS updates in 2011 that Symbian had a bright future with Nokia behind. After today’s Nokia and Microsoft announcement it seems that we were dead wrong. So wrong in fact, that it looks like Nokia is planning to abandon the Symbian platform in the near future. In reports released from Nokia, they plan to continue selling the Symbian phones and supporting the OS for now, but will move its focus to the Windows® Phone 7 OS, making that its main Smartphone OS. Nokia has not stated how long it will take to build up its Windows Phone 7 phone line-up and officially retire Symbian, but reports suggest about a year. Right after the announcement an image of a possible Nokia Windows Phone 7 mock-up was released and it is exciting to see the concept materialize.

So what does this mean for the Smartphone Market and for mobile application development? First it means that the top market share OS will dwindle and sometime in the near future cease to exist (Symbian still held 36.6% of the market share) and there will be 4 main OS players; Apple®, Android™, RIM and Windows Phone 7. It also means that those 4 will be jockeying for the top spot. While Windows Phone 7 does have a lot of ground to make up, I suspect with this new partnership we will see it post bigger numbers in the overall market share race next year.

What does it mean for developers? It means that Windows Phone 7 has some big backing and as mobile application developers we should be excited to see the progression of this OS. The announcement talked about integrating Nokia’s already successful map functions into the Windows operating system, providing a different tool set for developers to use in developing Windows Phone 7 mobile applications. Microsoft is making a strong play to stay in the Smartphone market and take on its competitors, Apple and Android. We believe this is a positive partnership and will give both companies additional leverage. The partnership however, probably means something different to developers that focused solely on the Symbian OS. For them it will mean deciding which OS to turn their focus/attention to in order to remain profitable. That choice depends on many factors; including where they work, coding preferences, and the purpose/market for the apps they are developing. It is a hard decision to face as a developer. We are lucky in that we are a mobile application development company, we are experts in developing apps for all platforms and can help app creators navigate the Smartphone landscape and build apps for Windows Phone 7 or any of the other platforms/OS.