Nokia is to phase out the Symbian platform on its flagship Nseries handsets by 2012.

It was revealed that Symbian is to be dropped from the range in favour of Li-Mo based Maemo by a marketing executive at the official launch of the N900, last week.

The transition is likely to be gradual, as some Symbian Nseries devices are still in development. There are no plans for Maemo handsets in Nokia’s Eseries or Xseries ranges as yet.

Maemo is going to be more dominant across the Nokia portfolio, Strategy Analytics’ head of wireless practice, Neil Mawston, told Mobile. He added: ‘It is clear that Nokia needs to improve the Nseries, and it is behind on touch-screens – Maemo could improve that.’

The Maemo platform is up to date, powerful and delivers a much better
touch-screen experience, according to Mawston.

A Nokia spokeswoman said: ‘While it is our policy not to disclose details of our product roadmap, we’d like to explicitly communicate that we remain firmly committed to Symbian as our smartphone platform of choice. Any speculation on our 2012 roadmap, including operating systems and product branding, is completely premature.

 ‘As we have stated earlier, Nokia has multiple platforms to serve different purposes and address different markets. Symbian is more successful than ever in bringing smartphones to the masses. Maemo is our software of choice for devices based on technology that would typically be found inside a desktop computer. It delivers a different user experience and enables us to widen the market we can address.’