It has been a big week in the mobile business market place. First, Nokia says Symbian will be discontinued in North America and the anticipated N9 running MeeGo will not make it to U.S. shores. Then Google buys Motorola on Monday and the environment goes into crazy with talk about patents and Android ecosystem fallout. Yesterday, HP admits it struck out with its acquisition of webOS and has hundreds of thousands HP TouchPads sitting in stock rooms across the country.
It is a volatile market and one that is being dominated by Apple and Android, to the detriment of all other comers in the space. It begs the question: what is the next mobile operating system or line of devices on the chopping block? That is the topic of this week’s ReadWriteMobile poll.
What are the choices? We can safely assume that Apple iOS is not going anywhere and that Android as a platform is safe for now. Yet, that does not mean that Android device lines are safe. What happens to Motorola’s Droid series now that the company is owned by Google? Do Acer, Asus, LG and the other Android tablet makers get out of that vertical as the iPad dominates the market?
What about Research In Motion? After Nokia, RIM is the next low-hanging fruit in the mobile ecosystem. The BlackBerry PlayBook has seen slow sales and lots of critiques, but some users actually love the device. RIM’s platform is now split, with BlackBerry 7 devices just hitting the shelves at the beginning of August and QNX smartphones supposedly coming early next year. What does RIM ax first – BlackBerry OS or QNX?
Nokia will eventually phase out Symbian worldwide as Windows Phone 7 becomes its primary focus. Will Symbian be the next shoe to drop? Or will the consortium of developers focused on MeeGo (of which, Nokia has more or less dropped out) finally throw up its arms and say it is not worth it?
Let us know what you think will be the next line of devices or mobile OS that goes to the graveyard in the poll and please elaborate your answers in the comments.
