Samsung Latest To Can Symbian Support

On Thursday, Samsung posted a message to its Samsung Mobile Innovator bulletin board. The message said, "Samsung Mobile Innovator will discontinue its Symbian support service from December 31, 2010." Samsung encourages Symbian developers to make sure they post any queries by December 10, 2010, so that they might be resolved before all the support and discussion boards are removed on December 31.

Further, Samsung says, "Registration and certification of Symbian applications for the Samsung Apps store will cease from 08:00am on the 31st of December 2010." In other words, Samsung is closing up shop and won't look at Symbian apps for its devices any more.

Samsung thanked its developers for their support and recommended that they turn to the Symbian Foundation moving forward.

Samsung has barreled head first into the smartphone arena with a slew of Android smartphones and tablets. It's Galaxy S line of Android handsets has already sold more than 2 million units in the U.S.

Samsung has also thrown its support behind Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 platform. Samsung recently announced that it plans to bring several Windows Phone 7 devices to market by the end of the year, and was named as an official launch partner by Microsoft.

Windows Phone 7 is expected to debut on October 11, with three devices all exclusive to AT&T. The devices will be made by Samsung and LG and HTC.

On September 24, Sony Ericsson also announced its decision to drop Symbian support. Sony Ericsson will concentrate on Android and Windows Phone moving forward.

Even though Sony Ericsson and Samsung produced only a handful of smartphones based on Symbian, their move to discontinue Symbian development has to sting the Symbian Foundation a bit. Symbian -- and its progenitor, Nokia -- have come under heavy fire for failure to compete with operating systems from Apple and Google.