Nokia Symbian phones outsold by the company’s smartphones

A recent report in Bloomberg has shown that, so far this year in the UK, the Symbian phone handsets manufactured by Nokia have been outsold by their smartphones, which use the Windows Phone operating system designed by Microsoft. The Bloomberg report was based on information gained by Kantar Worldpanel, whose research indicated that the percentage of British users of Nokia phones that had opted for a Windows Phone handset stood at 2.5 percent, compared with 2.4 percent that had bought a Symbian handset.

It is believed that the release of the Nokia Lumia 800 was the principal factor in this swing towards devices utilizing the Windows Phone operating system, as sales of this phone – which has this system – made up 87 percent of all of the sales of Windows Phone 7 throughout Europe in this period. The N9, which Nokia opted not to offer to users of Nokia phones in the UK, utilised Meego.

The news that the devices with the Windows Phone operating system are outselling those with Symbian will certainly limit the amount of time that the company devotes to the continued production of mobile devices using the latter operating system, although Nokia has indicated that it will continue to provide phones operating with the Symbian system until 2016 at least.

One of Kantar Worldpanel’s analysts, Dominic Sunnebo, stated:

“The fact that Windows Phone sales have overtaken Symbian based on one handset is encouraging. However Nokia will need to expand the range quickly in order to keep up with the slew of next generation competitor products being launched in quarter two.”

Confirming the company’s commitment to Symbian, at least for now, Nokia debuted the 808 PureView, which utilizes the Symbian operating system, during the Mobile World Congress. However the company also took the time to announce the launch of new Nokia mobile phones using the Windows Phone system – including the Lumia 610.