This news comes at a time of uncertainty for the Symbian Foundation, which has recently lost some of its biggest allies in the handset market.

It said it now controlled about 22 percent of the global handset market, 4.3 percentage points above its share in the quarter a year earlier.

"The handset market is very competitive, and Motorola needs to constantly tweak its business model," he said.

So then you agree that there was no real competition going on in the handset market, and that customers were being taken for a ride?

Its share of the global handset market grew to 19 percent, 5.5 percentage points above the year-ago period.

As the handset market has got more fragmented, so has the developer space.

"My worry is that the overall size of the handset market may be shrinking relative to expectations," he said.

Nokia, based in Finland, has more than one-third of the handset market.

In the midst of the project, the company's founders saw greater opportunity in the wireless handset market and shifted their focus.

As of 2012 it had around a 20 per cent share of the Japanese handset market.