News
Symbian passes 200m lifetime shipments
Tim Green May 20 2008, 10:54am
Symbian customers shipped 18.5 million smartphones in 1Q to bring lifetime shipments to 206 million.
This quarterly figure represents a 16.5 per cent increase on Q1 2007 (15.9 million). Meanwhile the device support remained strong, with 13 new Symbian phones launched in Q1 across over 250 operators by Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Nokia, Samsung, Sharp, and Sony Ericsson. The OS has been loaded on 235 different phone models since the formation of Symbian in 1998.
The five leading handset vendors also announced nine products based on Symbian OS v9. The products include UIQ-based Motorola Z10, Sony Ericsson G700 and Sony Ericsson G900 as well as S60-based LG KT610, Nokia N96, Nokia N78, Nokia 6210 Navigator, Nokia 6220 classic and Samsung G810.
Other highlights include:
· 154 Symbian phone models in the market
· Eight licensees with Symbian phone in the market
· 70 Symbian phone models in development
· 9,282 third-party Symbian applications commercially available
Nigel Clifford, CEO of Symbian, is looking forward to the acceleration of smartphones into the mass market.
He said: “Symbian continues to lead the smartphone OS market but is focused on increasing its share of the overall mobile phone market from seven per cent at the end of 2007.
“Achieving 200 million devices is testament to the commitment to excellence of Symbian engineers and of our thriving ecosystem of thousands of developers. We’re pleased with our progress and excited about the next wave of mobile innovation.”
For the future Symbian is looking towards GPS for significant uplift. It announced its own mobile OS LBS architecture at CTIA in April to help handset manufacturers create GPS-enabled devices for reduced investment and rapid time to market. The technology can also help developers cost-effectively target their LBS applications across multiple Symbian OS platforms. Mobile phones featuring Symbian’s LBS offering were recently launched in Japan.
