By 2014, Gartner predicts, the Android will tie with the Symbian OS in popularity.
But they only reached those numbers by adding together sales of Symbian OS devices, Windows Phone devices, and touchscreen Asha devices.
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Our new family of smartphones introduced today feature the all-new Symbian OS, rewritten to be faster, easier to use, more efficient and more developer friendly.
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Up until the moment Nokia pulled the plug and went for Windows Phone, Symbian OS was maintaining a health market share that Windows Phone right now would kill for.
It reshaped the smartphone industry while Nokia toyed with its Symbian OS. It gave us the Ultra, with MacAir, and it finally got tablets right with the iPad.
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The virus infects the Symbian OS found on Nokia Series 60 handsets and affects the phone directory software, selecting one directory profile at random and sending a copy of itself to that person.
But Nokia stuck with Symbian OS, adding in new elements such as touch screen operation and (slightly) improved media handling, rather than make a switch to one of their in-house alternatives that were under development.
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Then Samsung was also running Symbian OS, but withdrew from the consortium, picked up the nascent Android OS, and started out on the path that took them to the number one slot in the smartphone market.
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We haven't heard much about them, but they're rumored to run Symbian OS. We're sure you're now looking down at your new Samsung Galaxy Nexus with disdain, but we bet you could hire a few master craftsmen to make your own hand-engraved dragon for around the same price to help alleviate the regret.
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By crushing Nokia, Apple and Google took 5% out of the Finnish economy, wiped out the post-Psion, British OS Symbian, which had already found its way into over 350 million smartphones, and relegated Nokia to the status of struggling niche player, dependent on another US company, Microsoft, just at the point where it was going to write a new chapter in mobile, augmented reality and mapping.
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BarCap's Gardiner says Vanjoki's replacement could consider moving Nokia towards embracing Google's Android, the mobile operating system (OS) that is growing at many times the speed of Nokia's own OS, Symbian.
Psion moved to the Series 5 range with models released in 1997 and 1999, before the OS evolved into Symbian and anchored the first stages of the smartphone revolution.
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Cutting through all the talk about what will happen to its troubled Symbian operating system and future OS, Meego, new Chief Executive Stephen Elop said Nokia would streamline its development strategy for both, centering on a cross-platform framework called Qt.
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Stalwart RIM made a leap into the top three with its BlackBerry OS, as aging Symbian saw its usage decline further.
He says by far the most common start phone OS in the world today is Symbian.
One must remember that, when Nokia had their piggish Symbian, Nokia had full control over the OS. Not so with Windows Phone 8.
The software updates itself automatically over the Internet, and is available for each of the four main device platforms: Palm's Palm OS, Microsoft's Pocket PC and Windows CE, and Symbian's EPOC.
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