This intense investment in Symbian is perhaps odd because it follows an announcement, almost exactly a year ago, that Nokia in its high-end devices, and would aim to use its Linux-based Maemo project instead. However, this failed to happen in the flagship N8 phone, released recently, which again relied on Symbian.

This about-face might have something to do with the fact Maemo , or escaped the gravitational pull of its Linux hobbyist roots, although its sounds interesting.

Whatever the case, it's a chaotic time for mobile phone operating systems at the moment. The smart money is on Google's Android for all but Apple phones, which use Apple's proprietary iOS system.

I can't say that I care what happens to Symbian. Quite simply, I wish it would die. This seems an excellent opportunity.

Via a series of bad buying decisions over the last decade, Symbian has been the ever-present bane of my life. It's up there with Microsoft Windows as the operating system I've tolerated but never, ever actually liked. Most times I've hated it.