100 million Symbian smartphones shipped

[Nikos Kartalis]

Symbian announced that 100 million Symbian smartphones have shipped to over 250 network operators worldwide since Symbian’s formation. Symbian develops and licenses Symbian OS, the market-leading operating system for advanced, data-enabled mobile phones known as smartphones to the world’s leading handset manufacturers.

“Hitting the 100 million mark with over 100 different models currently shipping from 10 leading handset vendors is a phenomenal achievement for Symbian and a strong indication that more and more people are embracing the smartphone lifestyle. However, we are still at the beginning of a technology revolution that will change peoples’ lives profoundly,” said Nigel Clifford, CEO, Symbian.

The smartphone market is entering a new era of lower cost, higher volume devices. Andy Brown, mobile devices specialist at IDC, a leading global IT market intelligence company, predicts that cumulative sales of smartphones will reach over 1 billion units by 2011. He comments, "The smartphone segment of the handset market is seeing strong annual growth and is expected to rise from 57 million units in 2005 to around 250 million units by the end of 2010. The advent of single chip designs will inevitably attract a growing number of licensees and drive greater penetration into the mid-market."

Since the first Symbian OS phone, the Ericsson R380, shipped in 2000 Symbian has worked with an ecosystem of customers, partners, vendors, content players and application developers within a market place demanding ever increasing segmentation and customisation. This increased complexity has driven the demand for a powerful, robust, open operating system such as Symbian OS. Today, 100 million Symbian smartphones have sold around the world including devices manufactured by BenQ, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Sendo, Sharp, Siemens, and Sony Ericsson.

“Reaching the 100 million milestone is not Symbian’s achievement alone. We thank our customers and network operators for their support. We also thank Symbian developers for driving innovation in the smartphone market and our close network of 300 Symbian Platinum Partners, in particular our vital user interface partners in S60, UIQ and MOAP that continue to develop new software solutions and award winning applications for Symbian OS. Our combined efforts result in compelling, innovative and differentiated phones as demonstrated last month at the biggest yet Symbian Smartphone Show", said Nigel Clifford.

The Symbian Smartphone Show was held in October in London and hosted 120 exhibitors and received over 3000 delegates over its two days.


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