Nokia is set to ship its final Symbian OS smartphone “this summer”, according to the Financial Times.

While the news is hardly surprising – the company has not unveiled a device using the OS for more than twelve months, and has already said that shipments will not be material going forward – this will still mark the end of the line for a platform that was for many years dominant in the smart device industry.

Research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech said in the quarter to April 2013, Symbian OS still had a 1.8 per cent market share in the “EU5” (Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the UK) – a remarkable performance considering the lack of fresh devices available, and the limited support for the legacy OS from retail and operator partners.

In the first quarter of 2013, Nokia shipped 0.5 million Symbian OS devices.

According to the FT, Nokia said: “It took 22 months to get a Symbian phone out of the door. With Windows Phone, it is less than a year. We spend less time having to tinker with deep-lying code and more time on crafting elements of the experience that make a big difference, such as around photography, maps, music and apps in general.”

The last device announced by Nokia to use Symbian OS was the 808 PureView, the headline feature of which was its 41MP camera sensor. While it is anticipated that Nokia will launch a Windows Phone-powered device with similar headline-grabbing qualities, it has not done so as yet.