Everyone else did it better. It's not about who invented it first, its about innovating over other inventions.
Symbian still failed commercially in the market and couldn't compete or innovate with the other competitors.
At least if your ideas where more important to you than 'winning'
I'm not saying Nokia and symbian were better BTW. Just noting how our contemporary value system where, "it makes money"="it's good" is short sighted at times.
Android and iOS "won" because the phones were vastly more capable.
People tend to forget that you had a desktop quality browser in the first iPhone.
Easy of use and better UX is a very valuable "innovation".
Nokia actually had a touchscreen UI called Series90 but that went nowhere, they dismissed touchscreens completely initially, and then went with resistive touchscreens on the disastrous N97
Symbian was probably right about how it was handling of security, but it "lost" by disappearing from the game.
They didn't win commercially.
I realize this is a philosophical distinction, but it really does come down to whether you are attached to the fundamental characteristic of a thing, or the label/name/brand of the thing.
Financially, the brand matters. If Uber fails commercially, but ushers in an age of gig economy transportation, the idea won but the brand did not. As an investor or employee, you care deeply about the brand.
But as someone trying to change the world, you care deeply about the idea coming to pass by any means necessary. Sutherland did not get rich. But do we say he lost because “The Mother of All Demos” was not an Apple II or Macintosh?
Until the end of 2006 when T-Mobile (US) introduced the BlackBerry Pearl; it was at that point Symbian/S60 died in my life when I realized how limited it was and what it could have been, haven't touched one since (the Pearl being eclipsed by the first Androids after that in 2008). They had a shot and a solid following on HowardForums and just sort of blew it and let the competition outrun them.