Nokia says final sayonara to Symbian and MeeGo apps as store freezes updates

Summary: Nokia Store for Symbian became a time capsule on 1 January.

Nokia's Symbian and MeeGo app store entered a state of suspended animation yesterday, ahead of the store's total shutdown once it's in Microsoft's hands.

'Android before Android': The long, strange history of Symbian and why it matters for Nokia's future

'Android before Android': The long, strange history of Symbian and why it matters for Nokia's future
'Android before Android': The long, strange history of Symbian and why it matters for Nokia's future

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As the new year dawned, Nokia officially shut off Symbian developers' ability to make changes to existing MeeGo or Symbian apps, or publish new ones, on the Nokia Store.

The Symbian Signed team, which supports developers signing update files for apps that have been downloaded from the store, today said a brief goodbye to developers that have stuck with the abandoned platform.

"That was it; we are officially closed. Thank you all for the past years!" the Symbian Signed team wrote on Twitter today.

Weeks after announcing the planned sale of its devices and services business to Microsoft, Nokia gave its community of Symbian developers just three months to make final changes to any Symbian apps distributed through the Nokia Store.

Although the apps can still be distributed in their current state, should any bugs be discovered — impacting device compatibility, for example — developers won't be able to fix the problem through the Nokia Store.

There are however a few options left for developers needing to an update an app, according to All About Symbian. These include distributing and updating self-signed app files from their own server or distributing unsigned files to modded Nokia devices running custom firmware.

And while developers may still be able to update apps outside of the store, that doesn't mean that users will be able to receive the updates — without the Nokia Store, users won't be automatically be informed when there's a new update ready.

Despite giving its Symbian and MeeGo developers the cold shoulder, Nokia — prior to the sale of devices to Microsoft, which is expected to clear this quarter — hopes they will latch on to opportunities with its Asha and Windows Phone programs.

http://www.zdnet.com