Nokia Australia managing director Chris Carr has said that Nokia will continue to support new Symbian phones for two years after release owing to contractual arrangements.
Carr said that his company is committed to releasing Symbian-based phones in 2011 and 2012, reported the Australian.
This week, Nokia unveiled two new handsets that will run on the an upgraded version of the OS called Symbian Anna: the E6 and the X7. The company said both the new phones will hit the stores in Australia in the third quarter.
However, there are reports that the company’s decision to remove as many as 6000 employess is a part of the wider startegy to do away with the old OS, which is believed to have dragged down Nokia’s dominant position in the phone market.
In February this year, Nokia entered into a software partnership with Microsoft to power its phones with the new Windows 7 Phone operating system, starting in 2012.
However, Carr said the partnership does not mean that Nokia will use only Microsoft’s OS. He said the company has invested a "lot of money" in Symbian and that Nokia will produce both Symbian and Windows 7 Phone devices till 2012.
"There’s still a lot of ongoing development with Symbian, the two will co-exist. We’ve invested a lot of money in Symbian," Carr said.
"It’s not unusual in the industry to have multiple OS strategies."
Carr also said Nokia would continue to develop MeeGo in partnership with Intel.
