Symbian Foundation head Lee Williams has stepped down from his role effective Tuesday, the company said in an official statement. Williams, whose title was Executive Director, has been replaced by former Chief Financial Officer Tim Holbrow. Symbian is majority-owned by Nokia, a company that is no stranger to shakeups at the top — the Finnish manufacturer recently named a new CEO and shuffled several executive roles. Nokia also lost its head of mobile solutions last month when Anssi Vanjoki resigned. Despite all this turmoil and a constant stream of criticism from media, blogs and even users, Nokia’s Symbian OS remains the most popular smartphone operating system in the world by a significant margin. Hit the jump for the Symbian Foundation’s full statement.

The Symbian Foundation is today announcing that Lee M. Williams has stepped down from his position as Executive Director for personal reasons. We thank Lee for his work over the past two years and wish him all the best in his future ventures.

The Board of Directors has appointed Tim Holbrow, formerly the Symbian Foundation’s CFO, to the position of Executive Director with immediate effect. We congratulate Tim and welcome him to his new role.

Last week, we heard about Sony Ericsson bailing on Symbian and this week it looks like Samsung is following suit.  In a message to developers, Samsung noted that it would stop supporting Symbian developers on December 31, 2010. “We recommend posting any new discussion board queries no later than the 10th of December 2010 to ensure your issue can be addressed prior to the Forum’s closure,” wrote Samsung. “Please take this opportunity to download any required documentation before all content is removed.” It doesn’t get more clear cut than that. Samsung is suggesting developers utilize symbian.org as an alternative.

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Symbian released the source code for the S^4 homescreen application on Friday and posted up a gallery of images that provides a quick glimpse of the UI for the next generation Symbian operating system. The screengrabs show the homescreen with a clock widget, application categories, search, wallpaper selector, and more. One image is above and the remaining six are after the jump. Take a look and let us know your first impressions of Symbian^4 in the comments.

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Nick Jones of Gartner published a brief research note on his blog that paints a bleak picture of Symbian. According to Jones, Symbian is still the dominant platform, but it is losing market share at an accelerating pace as rivals like Android and iOS continue their upward trend. Jones is equally bearish regarding the future of Symbian and points to a product roadmap that is filled with features like audio policy packages, WiFi direct, and other similar additions that are of little interest to consumers. He even goes so far as to suggest that the Symbian Foundation should invest in some skunkworks projects or launch a design contest as a contingency plan in case Symbian^4 fails to deliver as promised. Wow. So what do you think, is this admonishment undeserved or does the Symbian Foundation and Nokia need a wake up call?

Thanks, johnny99!

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Nokia is on the warpath regarding the leaked N8 prototype handset that was the subject of a scathing review by Eldar Murtazin of Mobile-Review. Nokia publicly announced on its Conversations blog that it sent a written request to Murtazin asking for the return of this unauthorized property. Murtazin reportedly failed to respond to this letter and Nokia has sought the assistance of the Russian police. Nokia claims that this heavy-handed response was not prompted by the negative review from Murtazin but out of a need to protect its intellectual property. The tale gets even more sordid with Murtazin claiming via Twitter that he was never contacted by Nokia and accuses them of lying about the letter.

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Do Android developers outnumber iPhone developers? If you believe this survey of 401 mobile developers than yes, yes they do. Vision Mobile, a “market analysis and strategy firm delivering market know-how to the mobile industry,” have a poll that indicates that more mobile application developers have experience with Google’s Android platform than with any other mobile platform, including Apple’s iOS. Developers polled cited: large market penetration, speed of development, potential to make money, and low cost dev tools as reasons for initially choosing Android. Developers indicated that they have the most experience in Android, followed by iOS, Java ME, Symbian, then “mobile web.” We should note, the poll asked developers which mobile platform(s) they had experience coding in, so it was possible to answer with multiple platforms. Hit the read link to see some additional charts from Vision Mobile.

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Anssi Vanjoki, the head of Nokia’s new Mobile Solutions unit, sat down with the Wall Street Journal on Thursday to discuss the future of Nokia’s struggling mobile phone business. In the brief but pointed interview, Vanjoki re-confirmed Nokia’s commitment to Symbian and MeeGo, a Linux-based mobile OS  jointly created Nokia and Intel. For the time being, Symbian will remain an integral part of the mobile giant’s handset lineup while MeeGo will form the base for a growing number of upcoming handheld gadgets, including its flagship N-series lineup. Nokia continues to push out handsets, with the Symbian^3-powered N8 slated for launch in Q3, while the first MeeGo devices are expected to land by the end of the year. Nokia shot down any possibility of an Android handset by claiming that it can best create value by focusing on its own hardware and software. Speaking of hardware, Vanjoki assures US consumers that Nokia has not forgotten about the US market and expects to bring additional handsets like the T-Mobile 5230 Neuron stateside. The interview sets the stage for the future of Nokia and addresses many of the weak points singled out by Ricky Cadden in his Farewell to Symbian-Guru post which announced the closing of his popular Symbian blog. Wonder if there is any correlation?

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We told you last week that we’d be seeing more of the Nokia N9, and sure enough, a short little video overview of the device was published today. We’re not exactly sure how much there is to be learned from the video considering we know that the N9 will never ship with S60 (the OS it is seen running in the film), but at least we have video evidence that Nokia still knows how to make a solid piece of hardware. Hit the jump to check out the N9 in action.

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Why, hello, you thing of questionable sexiness. What we’re looking at here is the Nokia N9 live and in the digital flesh. Negri Electronics, the people that leaked the images, are keeping mum about the specs of the device until they’re ready to publish their full review, but from the images we can clearly see that previous rumors were correct in that there’s an 8 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash, front-facing camera with LED flash, sliding QWERTY keypad, nHD display (640×360), and support for the 850/1900 MHz bands of UMTS/HSDPA. It’s clear that this is an early prototype N9 considering its still running Symbian S60 — a platform that will now know will never again grace the Nseries line-up once the N8 is released — but we’re sure if and when Nokia launches the phone it’ll be running MeeGo. In the meantime, hit the jump for a couple more pics.

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Nokia fans waiting with bated breath for Symbian^3 and the N8 to arrive now have an exhaustive review of the next generation Symbian platform to tide them over. Courtesy of Eldar Murtazin, the review covers nearly every nook and cranny of the upcoming mobile operating system with screen galore. If you are expecting a glowing review that praises Nokia’s efforts, you better look elsewhere as Murtazin is brutally frank with his assessment and highly critical of the OS. Wrapping up his review, Murtazin acknowledges that S^3 is a step forward for Symbian but the platform still is several generations behind its competition. He calls Symbian^3 a gift from Nokia to its competition, explaining that Nokia’s flagship OS is “inferior to the already existing solutions” and can only make these other platforms look good in comparison. Ouch!

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There’s good news today for Canadians who are looking to replace their ageing Nokia E71s, as it was officially announced that the Nokia E72 will be coming to Telus. The E72 builds upon the feature set of its predecessor with a 5 megapixel camera, optical trackpack, 600MHz processor and 10.2 Mbps HSDPA connectivity. Pricing and a release date were not announced, although our friend at Mobile Syrup have it on good authority that it will launch on July 11th, most likely for $50 on contract or $330 outright. Anyone thinking of picking one of these bad boys up?

Read [Nokia] Read [July 11th]

Nokia’s facing a pretty bleak future when it comes to the world of smartphones, so the launch of the E73 Mode with T-Mobile couldn’t have come at a better time. Designed with business professionals in mind, but has enough features to make the average user happy including a 5 megapixel camera, free turn-by-turn navigation via Ovi Maps, and 10.2Mbps HSDPA which should make the device quite the speed king thanks to T-Mobile’s rapidly expanding 21Mbps HSPA+ network. The Mode is attractively priced at $69.99 on contract, but unless you’ve got some serious ants in your pants, you might want to wait until this Saturday when you’ll be able to get the Mode, along with all T-Mobile handsets, for free as a part of its Father’s Day promotion.

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Apparently square-ish handsets are the cool new thing for 2010, as Nokia has just pulled a Flipout and announced the X5-01. Said to “plug the gap” between the X3 and X6, the X5 packs 2.36″ QVGA display, 5 megapixel camera and a sliding QWERTY keypad into its aesthetically and ergonomically awkward 74.3mm x 66.4mm x 16.8mm frame. It runs Symbian S60 3rd Edition and comes with support for all major social media networks as well as email from Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail and Ovi Mail. The X5 doesn’t really have much in the way of special features, though Nokia says there are some motion-controlled features such as spinning the phone to switch to a random track and shaking it to check the number of unread messages. The Nokia X5 will be available in pink, azure, graphite black, yellow green, and purple in Q3 for around 165€ ($200 US).

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It looks like Symbian freaks based in Canada who already have the N97 from Bell will be able to get themselves a new plaything this summer, as Rogers is launching the Nokia N97 Mini. The device isn’t actually for sale yet but is rather being shipped out to dealers across the country, but barring any last minute chances it looks like the outright price of the N97 Mini has been set at $499.99 while the 3-year price is $99.99. Anyone planning to get this, or are you going to avoid it just like you would the plague (or N97 for that matter)?

Thanks, anonymous!

And once again we have proof that where there’s a good amount of smoke, there’s likely to be fire. Today Nokia announced it will be bringing the E73 Mode, a Symbian S60 device said to offer a perfect balance between work-life and, uh, life-life, to T-Mobile. Best thought of as a E72 with a facelift, the Mode features not only a 2.4″ QVGA display, full-QWERTY keypad, 5 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi and 10.2Mbps HSDPA, but also free turn-by-turn navigation from Ovi Maps. The Nokia E73 Mode will be available from T-Mobile on June 16th for $69.99 on a 2-year contract.Read