AT&T has backtracked on comments made by a senior executive last week that suggested the US mobile operator could base all its future mobile devices on just one or two operating systems. Speaking at the Symbian Partner Event in San Francisco last week, Roger Smith, director of next generation services at AT&T, said the operator was planning a “dramatic consolidation” of its mobile platforms over the next few years, and that Symbian was “a very credible and likely candidate” to become the platform for AT&T’s range of own-branded smartphones. 

However, PC Mag reports that AT&T has subsequently pledged to continue to offer customers “a choice in operating systems,” including ongoing support for BlackBerry and Windows Mobile. “But we also recognise that there is fragmentation in the mobile OS environment right now, and that’s caused by the fact that app developers have to write their apps for multiple OS and sometimes for multiple versions of the same OS,” said an AT&T spokesman in a statement. “Offering choice in operating systems and reducing the fragmentation in OS are two complementary goals.”