Sendo kills Z100, drops Microsoft for Nokia in future handsets

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Sendo was one of the earliest supporters of Microsoft’s “Windows Powered Smartphone Software” OS. (Microsoft marketing: You may want to work on that name thing.) However, today they announced that they’re dropping WPSS in favor of Nokia’s Symbian OS and killing the Z100 handset, which they announced just days ago. From Sendo’s UK home page:

It has been a very difficult decision for Sendo given its leadership position in the development of smart devices. We are disappointed that we will not be able to ship the Z100 given the high level of interest shown in the device.

Reuters quotes Symbian CEO Hugh Brogan as saying that one reason for the switch was that they couldn’t get access to source code for WPSS, but could for Symbian. There must be other reasons, since Sendo had planned on selling millions of Z100s, and won’t be able to introduce a Symbian-based phone for at least nine months.

Nokia and Microsoft are the two players to watch in the smartphone OS market, with Palm in a very-distant third place. The early leader here will have a strong influence on which digital media technologies become the lingua franca of Little Internet. Nokia appears to have the early lead, which means MMS (a limited profile of SMIL 2.0), MPEG-4 and J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition).

Handset manufacturers are terrified of both Nokia (which competes with them directly) and Microsoft, but appear to be more terrified of Microsoft. The Symbian vs. WPSS fight will be very interesting to watch. Link