NFC and Symbian

Nokia as NFC pioneer

Historically, Nokia was the first smartphone manufacturer who consequently implemented the NFC technology. The NFC pioneer Nokia co-founded the NFC-Forum with the goal to spread the NFC technology and to develop a norm for NFC tags. In 2007 Nokia cooperated with Telekom and RMV to conduct a field test of NFC ticketing in Germany. Furthermore, the company presented the first NFC-enabled smartphone: Nokia 6131 NFC. In 2011 Nokia announced that all following Symbian models by Nokia will be NFC-enabled.

The first NFC-enabled smartphone

The Nokia 6131 NFC is historically relevant as this was the first NFC-enabled smartphone. The clamshell model entered the market in 2007 and marked the starting point for many further NFC smartphones by Nokia. For example, the Nokia 6212 Classic (2008) and the Nokia 6216 Classic (2009) widened the NFC product range of Nokia. As the first manufacturer of NFC smartphone Nokia played an important role in spreading the technology.

Step by step farewell

Nevertheless, the economic problems of Nokia increased over the years and the manufacturer switched to Windows Phone as standard operating system. Thus, Symbian was used more and more seldom on smartphones since 2010. Three years later, the production of Symbian devices was discontinued.

Role of NOKIA today

NOKIA still does not manufacture smartphones itself these days, but acts as licensor for HMD Global. NOKIA hardware is manufactured by HMD Global and is recorded and sold with the Android operating system. NOKIA focuses its hardware mostly on particularly robust, waterproof, hinged or retro versions of its end devices.

Further information

• Wikipedia entry about Symbian