Week in Review: Nokia updates Symbian, browser wars kick off

gallery

Nokia shows Symbian some love

Love it or loathe it, the Symbian mobile operating system gets our sympathy after being ditched by Nokia for the trendy new kid in town, Windows Phone 7.

However, it seems Nokia didn’t want to part on bad terms and this week made a peace offering in the shape of an update.

Along with Symbian Anna, the Finnish manufacturer also released two new handsets to be based on the OS.

It was a sweet attempt to paper over the cracks, but there is no hiding the fact Symbian has taken the backseat to the flashier Microsoft boys.

Browser wars… again

It seems the minute one battle is over between the latest releases from Mozilla and Microsoft, we can scarcely draw breath before the next one kicks off.

This week saw both browser giants give some hints towards their next updates of Internet Explorer and Firefox, along with a ramped up release schedule.

Mozilla confirmed Firefox 5 would land in June, whilst Microsoft released a preview version of IE10, both just a month after the previous generation was unleashed.

It makes us tired thinking about even more updates, but then Google’s six week Chrome cycle should have prepared us.

PC market going bust?

The Marmite of the technology world award has to go to tablets. However, they seem to have won another accolade this week as the sole destroyer of the PC market.

OK, ‘sole’ is probably too strong, but both IDC and Gartner showed PC shipments declining in the first quarter of 2011 and the growth of tablets was cited as a pretty major factor.

We have seen plenty a tablet creeping into our offices and numerous displays all over the tube, but wiping out the home PC? I think we will need to see a few more quarters of decline until we are convinced…

Email to a friend

Print this page