As consumers eagerly await Nokia’s first Microsoft Windows Phone 7-based handsets later this year, it has become de rigueur to assume the ageing Symbian operating system the Finnish company has relied on for so long will soon be consigned to the scrapheap of mobile phone history.

That’s a mistake, says Nokia SA country manager Gerard Brandjes, who believes Symbian, particularly the Series 40 (S40) version for less powerful “feature phones”, will continue to play an important role for at least the next three to four years.

More than 1,5bn S40-based phones had been sold by the end of 2010 and in the second half of last year, 22% of all phones sold worldwide ran S40, according to the 100 Million Club, a watchlist that tracks mobile software usage.

Brandjes says that although a lot of attention is focused on the top end of the market, where Google (with Android), Apple (iOS), Microsoft (Windows Phone) and Nokia (S60) are slugging it out for market share, feature phones running S40 continue to sell well, especially in emerging markets.

Though Nokia has outsourced development of Symbian to Accenture, Brandjes says the S40 platform will continue to be an important component of the company’s total strategy.

“We are looking at connecting the next billion [people] and that will be done through S40,” he says.

Perhaps surprisingly, the S40 platform is also becoming popular for data, with half of application downloads from the Ovi Store — Nokia’s online app marketplace — in SA coming from what Brandjes calls the “S40 mainstream”.

“Mainstream consumers are starting to understand the value proposition to Nokia beyond just the device,” he says. “For the next three or four years, millions of Nokia users will continue using feature phones [and] we need to make sure we transition them into the smartphone segment.”

Feature phones running S40 will continue to play an important role in Nokia’s product line-up, Brandjes says.

In the smartphone market, Nokia will begin pushing Windows Phone devices aggressively later this year when it is expected to start shipping at least two or three handsets covering a range of price points.

The company will take the wraps off its first Windows phones, running the 7.5 “Mango” update, in the next few months. It may use the annual Nokia World event, taking place in London in late October, to launch the Windows-based devices. — Duncan McLeod, TechCentral