A few years back I had hypothesized that Nokia would roll all of its intellectual property and know-how into creating one kick-ass next-gen version  of its Symbian OS, making Symbian not only competitive, but also able to support from the lowest of the low end phones to the highest end smartphones.  Last week we found out otherwise.  Nokia and Microsoft entered an agreement in which Nokia and Microsoft would collaborate, share resources (like Nokia's Navteq technology) and Nokia would run Windows Phone 7 on their high end smartphones.  Symbian is essentially end-of-lifed and meego is now a hobby project.

While it is exciting to see Windows Phone 7 get such an endorsement, it's also sad to see Symbian go.  To be honest, Nokia really fudged up Symbian. They could have been first with making apps easier to make for developers, easier to market and sell, and easier to get people onto their Ovi platform (email, contacts, calendar wireless sync on their phones - ALL of which are free!).  I fired up my N800 internet tablet the other night to run some updates and I realized how much Nokia had also fudged up that platform as well. By focusing mostly on the browsing aspect of, they left a lot out there in terms of the PIM arena. People who used an internet tablet would have needed to only access their PIM data on their phone  - wrong move! RIM is doing the same thing with their Playbook tablet and I think this is a wrong move as well! With their Ovi suite, and synching, Nokia could have leveraged their cloud offerings to make the internet tablet one kick-butt experience.

In addition, Nokia never focused on the media.  The N800 had a great screen, great for playing back movies, and two SD slots.  Had they paid more attention to the media component, and to networked media such as streaming audio/video and podcasts, it would have been quite a formidable tablet - ages before Apple came out with their iPad.  I honestly hope that Windows Phone doesn't suffer the same fate as Maemo, Meego and Symbian - that is having Microsoft and Nokia rest on their laurels...