Nokia to end support for Symbian and MeeGo starting Jan 1st

Nokia has confimred that it will be ending support to Symbian andMeeGo operating systems by the end of the year.

In an email addressed to developers, Nokia said, "If you have Symbian andMeeGo content in the Nokia Store, it will continue to be available for download to customers, and you will continue to receive download and revenue reports as well as payouts for downloaded content. However, starting January 1, 2014, you will no longer be able to publish any new content or update existing content for Symbian and MeeGo."

The company said thatas part of moving forward, it has decided to focus its support and investment on Asha and Windows Phone platforms.

Nokia was expected to support Symbian and MeeGo platforms atleast till 2016. However, with the company selling its phone business to Microsoft earlier last month analysts have been expecting this move.

Nokia unveiled its first Symbian-based handset back in 2002, Nokia 7650. The company's latest Symbian-based handset was Pure View 808 in last year, which run on Belle version of Symbian.

For Symbian users stopping of support means that they will be able to download existing apps from the Nokia Ovi store. However, there will be no update of these apps starting from January 1, next year.

As for developers, it means that they will no longer be able to publish new apps or update existing apps on the Nokia Ovi store (from 2014 onwards). However, they will still continue to get revenue from the downloads of their existing apps.