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Nokia Store will stop accepting Symbian, Meego apps January 1st

Lewis Leong

Lewis Leong

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Sad news for Symbian and Meego fans. Nokia announced via an email to developers that the Nokia Store will stop accepting new or updated Symbian and Meego apps starting on Janurary 1st, 2014. This goes against Nokia’s previous promise to support Symbian until 2016.

While it’s sad to see Symbian and Meego languish, it’s not entirely surprising. Symbian had already been discontinued at the beginning of the year and Nokia’s phone business was purchased by Microsoft at the beginning of September , forcing the company to restructure entirely around Windows Phone.

Nokia Store will stop accepting Symbian, Meego apps January 1st

Here’s what the developer email said:

“Dear Nokia Developer,

With the growing business opportunities available on the Asha and Windows Phone platforms, we have been reviewing our developer content programs to see how we can maximize our support to you, our developers. As a result of this review, we have decided to focus our support and investment in new content toward Asha and Windows Phone. Over the next few months we will be transitioning our active developer support away from Symbian and MeeGo.

If you have Symbian and MeeGo content in the Nokia Store, it will continue to be available for download to customers, and you will continue to receive download and revenue reports as well as payouts for downloaded content. However, starting January 1, 2014, you will no longer be able to publish any new content or update existing content for Symbian and MeeGo.

We are very excited about the opportunities available with Asha and Windows Phone, and hope that you will bring your talents to these platforms. We believe that these changes will help improve our ability to support you as you develop fantastic apps for your customers.”

There will be millions of Symbian users who will be disappointed to hear that their operating system will no longer be receiving new or updated apps at the beginning of the new year. It remains to be seen whether or not Nokia’s plan to promote Asha and Windows Phone will pay off for Microsoft. Perhaps Nokia will make Symbian open source, which is what HP did after giving up on Palm OS.

Source: All About Symbian

Lewis Leong

Lewis Leong

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