Symbian Foundation chief Lee Williams steps down

The head of the Symbian Foundation, Lee Williams, has quit.

According to a statement from Symbian on Tuesday, Williams stepped down for "personal reasons". He has been immediately replaced with Tim Holbrow, the foundations chief financial officer.

Williams's departure is the latest in a string of exits associated with the mobile operating system, which — since Samsung and Sony Ericsson abandoned the platform in the last month — is now supported only by Nokia, Fujitsu and Sharp.

Recent months have seen the resignations of Nokia chief Olli Pekka-Kallasvuo, now replaced by ex-Microsoft Office man Stephen Elop, and smartphone division chief Anssi Vanjoki, and Ari Jaaksi, the chief of Nokia's other OS, Meego, who was almost immediately snapped up by HP to work on Palm's WebOS.

Despite the steady flow of Symbian-related departures, this month Nokia hailed the success — surprising to many — of its Ovi services platform, which runs on Symbian and is apparently doing very well in Nokia's core growth market of the so-called developing world.