Samsung is reportedly dropping support for the Symbian operating system. According to Engadget, the company sent an email to Symbian developers saying they are closing its Symbian forum and removing all Symbian content before the year is over.
While perhaps not entirely unexpected, as Engadget points out Samsung hinted at such a move last year, it is interesting timing. Symbian has recently revamped its OS.
Marketers may want to take note of the decreased support of Symbian. Recent research from Smaato indicated that Symbian beats all other mobile operating systems when it comes to ads clicked.
"Symbian and Feature Phones continue to perform well with a CTR Index of 130 (145 in July) and 120 (118 in July) respectively," the company says. "RIM passes Android in performance, with its strongest month since Smaato’s metrics began. Apple overtook Windows Phone, as it fell by almost half from 98 in July to 58. The Index consists of the average CTR of all devices and this number is set to 100."
"Symbian remains the leading OS in both regions [USA and Europe] as Windows Phone and Android both dropped by around 40% in the US (Windows 153 in July 80 in August. Android 103 in July to 60)," says Smaato. "In Europe, Windows Phone and Android dropped in performance, but while Windows remains the second best OS, Android fell to last place."
That research comes from a company that serves over 16 billion ad requests from over 7,000 publishers over 50 ad networks.
A couple weeks ago, Nokia announced a new family of smartphones powered by Symbian.