Sony Ericsson ditches Symbian in favor of Android
By siliconindia   |   Monday, 27 September 2010, 22:26 IST   |    1 Comments
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Sony Ericsson ditches Symbian in favor of Android
Bangalore: Android is gaining ground in the mobile operating system arena. And it is expected to reach the top spot by 2013. With this background, it comes as no surprise that Sony Ericsson has officially confirmed that it will stop producing Symbian based smartphones in future, and will switch over to Android platform for most of its products. The last of Sony's smartphones to run on Symbian will be the Vivaz and the Vivaz Pro. The confirmation comes from a Sony Ericsson spokesperson who said, "We have no plans for the time being to develop any new products on the Symbian Foundation standard or operating system." Although Sony will continue to remain a member of the Symbian Foundation, the company's Chief Creation Officer, Rikko Sakaguch has also confirmed about its future with the Android platform. Although Symbian is still the most popular platform for smartphones, popularized by Nokia, its market share has drastically fallen from 41.2 percent in Q2 this year as compared to 51 percent in the same period last year. Reports also mention that the markets for iOS and Android have increased significantly in the same time frame. Other smartphone makers like Samsung and LG have also cut back on their support for Symbian. As Sony prepares to gain market share by switching to Android from Symbian, the company has been condemned for its slow upgradation of Android platforms. At a time when device makers are releasing Android 2.2 ready devices in market, some of Sony's Android 2.1 models are yet to hit the market that were scheduled to hit shelves this month. At this point, we can only hope that Sony gears up and shifts to Android 2.2 to be in the race.

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