Twitter For Nokia Finally Released, But Why?


Twitter today announced today that, after a substantial wait, Nokia Symbian OS (Series 40) users will finally be able to download the official Twitter client app to their devices. The real question is: why did it bother?

Nokia shuttered its Symbian development facilities all over the world last year as the handset giant tried to stave off a massive profit downturn and let go thousands of staff iwn the process.

Since then, the only Symbian OS-powered handset of note to come out of Finland is the Nokia 808 PureView — the 41-megapixel monster. It’s just arrived in North America after being out in Europe for a while before that, but as it hit store shelves, Nokia rendered the phone irrelevant by telling the world that the camera technology — arguably the phone’s only drawcard — would be heading to Lumia handsets soon.

For the uninformed, the Lumia is the brand that Nokia loads the Windows Phone 7 operating system onto, and it’s the one with the more promising future by a long shot.

So why did Twitter even bother developing for the Symbian OS platform? Nokia still sells a lot of Symbian handsets to developing nations, but even they have the Lumia 710 available.

You’ll probably argue that the Twitter app in question here has been developed for Symbian Series 40 devices, all of which are feature phones and not smartphones. That’s a fair point, but aren’t people buying feature phones because they don’t want apps like Twitter on their devices?

Could Twitter have put these developer resources elsewhere, or is a Twitter client for Nokia a good idea? [Twitter Blog]

Image: Twitter


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