Anna and Belle are all about retention (with a hint of attraction)

Reports of the death of Symbian are clashing with the news of the next big update to the Symbian OS from Nokia. The official announcement of Belle, in close succession to Anna being available for the existing Symbian^3 devices (including the Nokia E7, which I still love, laws and all) is in contrast to HP.

HP have shown that when a company wants to kill a mobile OS, they can, quickly and efficiently. So for all the fluff on-line about Nokia’s Feb 11th announcement and the perception that this was the neutering of Symbian, it’s not come to pass. A major OS update delivered already, a second update (with a number of UI improvements as well as buckets of under-the-hood tweaks) before the end of the year, and a pipeline of new devices targeted at various markets around the world… Symbian was never the darling of the market, and I’m not sure it’s going to slingshot unit sales ahead of Samsung, but what it will do is consolidate Symbian’s current position.

The question mark is is whether Nokia’s Windows Phone will sell in low, middle or high numbers. And what’s going to happen to Symbian sales in 2012.