It's not in the stores yet but in Europe at least the anticipation is hotting up for the Nokia N8 smartphone. It's causing excited ripples for two reasons: first it's going to be seen as the first time Nokia has come out with something serious to combat the iPhone in its core market, and second because Nokia is so clearly still a Symbian company.
It's worth repeating the first of those points. Nokia, still the market leader in the mobile market by a long stretch, is only just about to release its competitor to the Apple iPhone. This should tell developers a number of things, not least of which is that no matter how many or how elegant their apps, if they are targeting the Apple market they are still targeting the minority.
This brings us to the credibility of the other part of the announcement, Nokia's adherence to the Symbian platform. This has a long snd noble history but most of the hype, the press releases, the industry buzz over the last year has been about Android squaring up to the iPhone. Symbian, for all its strengths and its established lineage, barely rates a mention and following HP's acquisition of the WebOS system along with the rest of Palm, you can see why Symbian has appeared to be struggling.
And yet the figures state that Nokia makes 20m phones a week. Symbian might not be makkng the same public declarations as its rivals but it's not down and it's not out. And when the N8 emerges it will be interesting to see how much of the iPhone style market it can claw back. Developers, be ready - you may have another platform to develop for after finishing your iOS and Android Apps.
