A little over a week ago, Nokia killed off the Symbian name, instead calling the platform Nokia Belle and, hopefully, letting it die a swift and unencumbered death. And then yesterday we find out that the very same Symbian, is the most popular mobile platform in the whole wide world.
Of course, that’s a position Symbian’s held for months and months, owing to its popularity in parts of Europe and developing markets. But that’s always been the problem with Symbian: broad distribution, sure, but a shoddy product confined — for the most part — to the low end of the market. And while it lives on as Nokia Belle, it’s hard to tell whether the move is one to reenergise through rebranding, or a muted death sentence.
In some ways, Symbian’s continued popularity makes Nokia’s Windows Phone investment an even more impressive gamble; Microsoft’s mobile offering is the most promising we’ve seen in years (this coming from a very happy Lumia user), but it doesn’t take too keen an eye to see that it doesn’t even register on the chart above. [Pingdom]