Nokia is expected to report significant growth in Symbian shipments, along with otherwise unimpressive results for its fourth quarter.
But the progress of models running the reworked Symbian OS will certainly not be seen in one large market, the US. Nokia has suffered another setback in its uphill struggle to penetrate the north American space, canceling the launch of an exclusive smartphone for AT&T, the X7.
Last year, AT&T seemed to be offering Nokia the much-needed breakthrough that would give it a major US carrier deal covering a raft of phones rather than just the occasional model (the E7x enterprise family does modestly well in the country, for instance).
AT&T was looking for distinctive smartphone offerings as it prepared to lose its iPhone exclusive, and put its weight behind a multi-platform array embracing Symbian plus Nokia's Ovi applications, as well as webOS, BlackBerry, Android and, for the midrange, Qualcomm Brew.
This was designed to differentiate AT&T's smartphone portfolio from the heavily Android focused one of Verizon.
Nokia set up a design center focused on AT&T and launched a couple of rather low profile models for the carrier, but the X7 was to be the start of a new and more intense relationship. Now, though, The Wall Street Journal reports that the launch has been canceled indefinitely, though variants of the X7 will still go ahead outside the US.
The loss of the X7 will not be much noticed by US consumers, given the flood of superphones arriving on the shelves, though leaked details suggest it would have been a good addition to AT&T's portfolio, which is rather light on top end models like Verizon's Droid monsters.