Nokia will pull all Symbian phones from the US market, as it gets ready to switch completely to Windows Phone.
The troubled mobile manufacturer is expected to release its first Windows Phone handset later this year, after signing an exclusive deal with Microsoft.
Nokia has now said all Symbian phones - even its low-end Symbian 40 feature phones - will stop being sold in the US and Canada.
“When we launch Windows Phones we will essentially be out of the Symbian business, the S40 business, etc,” Nokia's US president Chris Weber told the All Things Digital blog. “It will be Windows Phone and the accessories around that. The reality is if we are not successful with Windows Phone, it doesn’t matter what we do (elsewhere).”
While Nokia has been bleeding share in the smartphone market, losing out to Android and the iPhone, it has remained a top seller in so-called feature phones.
In the first quarter of this year, more than three-quarters of the 100 million phones it sold globally were feature phones, according to Gartner. However, the analyst firm noted that consumers in mature markets - such as Europe and the US - were increasingly moving to smartphones.
Indeed, Nokia's Weber admitted that the North American market would be Nokia's focus.
“We’ll develop for North America and make the phones globally available and applicable,” Weber said. “In fact, evidence of that is that the first Windows Phones that will ship are being done by our group in San Diego.”
The report said there were no plans to bring the Meego-based N9 to the US.
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