A leading Gartner analyst has warned that the Symbian OS is poised to lose further market share to rivals and has criticised the Symbian Foundation for not addressing the problems with the platform. In an official Gartner blog, Nick Jones (pictured) said the main reason Symbian is losing share is the user experience “which isn’t competitive with Apple or Android,” adding that the latest version of the platform (Symbian 3) “looks to have polished a few of the rough edges, but doesn’t fix the problem.” Gartner is due to publish its latest mobile operating system market share forecasts at the end of the month and Jones notes that the  rate at which Symbian is losing share is accelerating.“That’s not to say that Symbian won’t remain the dominant platform for a few years more, but it does mean that the competition – especially Android – is catching up very fast,” he said.

Jones also accused the work being done by the Symbian Foundation – the open source organisation that promotes the Symbian platform – as “just re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and ignoring the Android iceberg ahead,” and failing to address the issues with the Symbian user interface (UI). “What I see is too much effort on stuff that really doesn’t matter,” he added. “The situation is now serious enough that any developer who isn’t working on something directly related to a new UI is wasting their time.”