Nokia to focus on touchscreen and QWERTY keypad phones in 2010, but will keep Symbian
Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo has been giving some hints about the direction of the company and top of the agenda are more touchscreen and/or QWERTY keypad phones. At its annual Capital Markets Day in Helsinki Kallasvuo also promised to focus on the user experience an area where Nokia has fallen a long way behind rivals like Apple and Motorola.
However that doesn’t mean to say that Nokia is going to ditch its Symbian operating system. “In 2010, we will drive user experience improvements, and the progress we make will take the Symbian user interface to a new level. As an operating system, Symbian has reach and flexibility like no other platform, and we have measures in place to push smartphones down to new price points globally, while growing margins.”
The company is also committed to “Re-engineer our Symbian user interface; deliver a major product milestone before mid-year 2010, and another major product milestone before the end of 2010.”
Although we have recently seen more innovative Nokia handsets like the X6, it is clear that the company is taking a beating in the smartphone markets with users favouring iPhone and Android handsets. I suspects that for Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo the end of 2010 and that ‘milestone handset’ can’t come soon enough.
