I worked for Nokia between 2005-2012. During that time, roughly, it managed itself into its own eventual demise. Symbian, it's technical limitations, and general many spots across senior management for the types of qualities actually valued by users kind of set the stage for both Apple and Google to come in and disrupt the market with an initially remarkably mediocre effort: it didn't take much to disrupt the train wreck that was Symbian.
The first IOS versions had quite a few limitations and a long list of stuff that it basically did not have at all. Yet it was better in only two ways:
- it had a well thought out UX; users loved that
- it did not crash all the time and wasn't riddled with bugs; unlike just about anything that Nokia shipped.
There was a long list of stuff Symbian could technically do but sucked so hard at that few users actually bothered with using those things. Like using the web, taking photos and sharing them with friends, or doing some video conferencing. Technically you could do all those things but it was a combination of painfully awkward to do, unusable and extremely likely in your phone resetting randomly. All that was probably fixable technically but none of that was something Nokia was able to actually pull off due to it's management structure, priorities, and a general complete vacuum at the top in terms of leadership and vision.
Looking back, Nokia's bad decision making started around the time Linux became an obvious future choice for phones (late nineties) and just a few years ago before a tiny startup called Android actually started dreaming of making a linux & Java based phone. Instead Nokia ignored the signs of the time (and the many embedded hardware manufacturers experimenting with linux) and went for a little known 32 bit successor to 16 bit OS from the nineteen eighties and threw its weight behind it.
Google bought Android around the same time Apple kicked it's IOS efforts into gear, which was around the time I joined Nokia and also around the time Nokia Symbian phones actually started shipping in more meaningful volume (it was late and not great initially).
Symbian was not what made Nokia rich. That was actually two other platforms called S30 and S40. The S here is often confused for Symbian but actually means Series. Series 30 dates back to the early nineties and still ships in some volume in developing markets for a few dollars. That infamous indestructible Nokia phone that always comes up in Nokia nostalgia? S30. Snake, Calls, and SMS. All it did. (OK and a little WAP if you got any value out of that walled garden).
S40 started shipping around 1999 (the flip phone in the Matrix was the first model). Initially with black and white screens. Later with color screens, multi media capabilities, etc. This was the backbone of Nokia's revenue right until MS came in. Not Symbian either and actually kind of a cool OS design for its time.
Only Series 60, 80, and 90 were actually Symbian based. Nokia did not actually start shipping Symbian in volume until about 2004/2005, right when it's competition was basically going from prototype to eventual reality at Apple & Google.
The e-series phones (the ones with qwerty keyboards) were popular but comparatively a niche market. Initially that was S80 (the business variant) and later the two remaining Nokia Symbian platforms merged and S60 became the only version (initially this was positioned for multi media and gaming devices). Technically all of these were UI layers on top of Symbian. Ericsson had its own version called UIQ.
There were a quite a few flagship S60 phones that were basically variations of candy bars until after the iphone shipped. Nokia actually killed off S90 in 2005 which was intended as a touchscreen variant. Yep, that's the same year Google bought Android and Apple was moving ahead with IOS. And, yes, Nokia was well aware of those two facts (very much a public secret at the time).
For the next 3 years the only touch screen devices Nokia sold were Linux based. Only in 2007 Nokia woke up and went "oh F*" and gobbled together a company killing version of a touch screen phone on top of S60. I can't emphasize how rushed and how bad this was. Especially considering it had a perfectly good shipping Linux tablet running basically the same kernel as what later became Android.
It spent the next five years convincing consumers how much S60 didn't suck while failing repeatedly and hard. Especially a few years after Apple ate their lunch it became increasingly painful to watch. Lots of desperate moves happened during that time.
Fun fact, Nokia shipped an internet tablet running Debian Linux with X, GTK and a Mozilla Gecko based browser around 2006, almost half a decade before the ipad shipped. This thing was awesome and the reasons for it shipping without phone capabilities were entirely political and non technical (think management having a hard-on for Symbian). This little tablet eventually became a phone and then the whole MS thing happened. Meanwhile Google bought a lot of these because it basically ran the same kernel and drivers as early versions of Android and you could dual boot them to whatever; which was a nice feature to have before they shipped the first Nexus phone.
Nokia basically helped bootstrap Android but was too occupied moving deck chairs around on the sinking ship that was Symbian.
So, no, Symbian did not win.