Remember a statement made by Nokia a month ago, that they would be using Symbian S60 on phones and Maemo on “Internet devices” in the future? Well, according to Digitimes that may have changed, and if I were S60 I would be looking for another gig right now.

Digitimes is reporting that for the first time Nokia is looking to take phone production outside their own company, and are hunting for an ODM manufacturer in Taiwan to produce Maemo-based smartphones.

They have requested information and quotes from Compal Communications and Chi Mei Communication Systems (CMCS), according to a Commercial Times story.

So does this spell the beginning of the end of S60 as a Smartphone OS, or is Nokia just positioning it’s next set of smartphones to be more powerful to take on the iPhone and Android? Stay tuned, and await more cryptic signs from Finland.

Zealot (469 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).