Well, this was inevitable. After Samsung and Sony Ericsson abandoning Symbian for their line of smartphones, and after Symbian Foundation executive director Lee Williams leaving the company for "personal reasons", there's now a report that the Symbian Foundation is winding down its operations, in preparation for closing up shop entirely.
The news comes from a "source close to Symbian", and basically states that Lee Williams' successor as executive director, chief financial officer Tim Holbrow, has been appointed to wind down the Symbian Foundation's operations. This seems in line with Holbrow's background in finance, whereas Williams worked within Nokia on S60.
El Reg contacted the Symbian Foundation for a response, and they nor confirmed, nor denied the report from the source. "The future business strategy for the Symbian Foundation is still under review by the board," they stated, "As no decisions have been made, we will not be offering further comment."
At this point, only Nokia is really putting any kind of effort behind the Symbian platform. Nokia spent quite a lot of money buying Sony Ericsson, Ericsson, Panasonic, and Siemens out of Symbian in order to open up the code. The Foundation was set up to steer development of the platform, but if this report is true, Symbian's future seems to be even more at stake than anticipated.
Source: OSnews
