Symbian
About Us home
Company overview
Fast facts
Symbian OS
Financial statements
Terms & Conditions
Contact us

Symbian Fast Facts Q1 2008

The company: Symbian Limited    

Website: www.symbian.com

CEO: Nigel Clifford

Offices
Symbian’s headquarters are based in London, United Kingdom, with offices in the United Kingdom, United States and Asia (Bangalore, Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo)

Founded: 1998

Number of employees: 1493

Shareholders:
Ericsson (15.6%), Nokia (47.9%), Panasonic (10.5%), Samsung (4.5%), Siemens (8.4%) and Sony Ericsson (13.1%)

The product: Symbian OS™

Core business:
Symbian creates and licenses Symbian OS, the market leading open operating system for mobile phones

User interfaces designed for Symbian OS include Nokia’s S60, NTT DoCoMo’s MOAP user interface for the FOMA™ 3G network and UIQ, designed by UIQ Technology, a joint venture between Motorola and Sony Ericsson

Licensees:

Mobile phone manufacturers that shipped Symbian smartphones in Q4 2007 are Fujitsu, LG Electronics, Motorola, Mitsubishi Electric, Nokia, Samsung, Sharp and Sony Ericsson

Significant Symbian Facts & Figures

Market leader

As of 31 March 2008:

  • 206m cumulative Symbian OS shipments across 235 different phone models since the formation of Symbian
  • 18.5m Symbian mobile phones shipped to consumers worldwide – a 16.5% increase on Q107 (15.9m)
  • 92% growth in consulting services from £2.5m in Q107 to £4.8m in Q108 driven by a demand for Symbian services resulting from a broader and deeper range of customer mobile phone products in the pipeline
  • The world’s five leading handset vendors 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 
  • 13 Symbian mobile phones commenced shipment in Q108 through over 250 major network operators by 6 licensees - Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Nokia, Samsung, Sharp, and Sony Ericsson - there were 14 models in Q107
  • Symbian OS v9.3 is the latest version of Symbian OS to ship.  Symbian OS v9.3 is optimized for convergence, with performance and feature enhancements
  • 9,282 third-party Symbian applications now commercially available, a 24% increase on 31 March 2007 (7478 applications).Source: Symbian research, see Notes to Editors

Consumer technology benchmarks

  • 291.6 million mobile phones shipped in Q1 2008 [1]
  • 1.7 million iPhones shipped in the quarter ending March 2008 [2]
  • 10.6 million iPods shipped in the quarter ending March 2008 [3]
  • 2.18 million BlackBerry subscriber accounts and 4.4 million devices shipped in the quarter March 2008 [4]
  • 1.24 billion mobile phones will be shipped in 2008 according to Strategy Analytics [5]
  • Total smartphone sales will break the 1 billion unit mark by 2010 [6]
  • 69.5 million PCs were shipped in Q1 2008 (including desktops, servers and laptops) [7]

Ten years of innovation and milestones 

2008

Symbian surpasses the 200 million unit sales mark. It took us eight years to reach 100 million units and only a further 18 months to cover the next 100 million.

2007

Symbian announces new technologies for the future of converged device development including FreeWay, ScreenPlay and Symmetric Multi Processing (SMP)

2006

100 million Symbian smartphones shipped

2005

Symbian OS v9 announced with Platform Security and support for single core processors, WebCore and JavaScriptCore components of Apple's Safari™ browser

2004

Symbian OS selected by NTT DoCoMo as software platform for 3G FOMA™ handsets

2003

Symbian smartphones support mobile payments in Japan, first Motorola smartphone on UIQ A920, Samsung becomes a shareholder

2002

First smartphone on UIQ – Sony Ericsson P800, Siemens and Sony Ericsson become shareholders

2001

First open Symbian smartphone - Nokia 9210 Communicator - and first GPRS, camera smartphone - Nokia 7650

2000

First touch-screen phone - Ericsson R380 on Symbian OS v5

1999

Symbian and NTT DoCoMo sign R&D agreement to develop smartphones for Japan, Matsushita (Panasonic) becomes a shareholder

1998

Symbian founded by Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Psion

Developer highlights

  • A thriving global Symbian developer population supported by developer programs such as Symbian Developer Network, Forum Nokia, UIQ, SEMC Developer World and MotoDev and increasingly expanding into countries such as China, Japan, India and the US
  • A total of 9,282 third-party Symbian applications have been released for Symbian OS up to Q108, an increase of 6%increase over Q407
  • Symbian Signed received on average 30 new applications per day during Q1 2008
  • Over 100,000 unique users of the Symbian Developer Network website every month in Q108
  • 100% growth in Q108 in hits to developer.symbian.com versus Q107
  • Symbian signs up as Charter member of Mobile Developers’ Group in April 2008; other Charter members include Forum Nokia, UIQ, Orange, AT&T and Access
  • Symbian now has 10 companies in the Symbian Competence Centre (SCC) Programme as of April 2008, which aims to reduce product development time and cost and improve time-to-market and quality
  • Free developer environment, Carbide.c++ Express for entry level developers
  • Symbian OS opens to non-mobile developer community with P.I.P.S in January 2007

Symbian Academy highlights

  • Since its formation in June 2006, Symbian Academy has collaborated with 56 universities, 13 added in 2008 so far, in countries as including; China, India, Poland, Russia, and the United States
  • In 2008 Symbian has targeted growth in India with first Symbian Academy event for lecturers that will train over 20 lecturers from 10 universities from all over India
  • In 2007, Symbian Academy launched a jobs board for Symbian partners and licensees to post jobs for Symbian Academy students
  • Symbian Academy professors have developed innovative applications and programs including pollution monitoring and mapping on GPS enabled Symbian smartphones

Operator success

Dec 2007 Symbian smartphones selling through more than 250 major network operators worldwide
Feb 2007 Telefónica Móviles España selects Symbian OS for future roll-out of smartphones and services
Feb 2007 Telecom Italia selects S60 software on Symbian OS
Feb 2007­­ Nokia announced a collaboration to strengthen T-Mobile's capabilities to bring core services to market and improve the capability of S60 licensees to develop devices for T-Mobile
Nov 2006 3 launches the X-Series first for devices based on UIQ and S60 on Symbian OS
Oct 2006 Orange specified S60 on Symbian OS as a platform of choice to accelerate Orange device customization, shorten time-to-market and accelerate application development
Oct 2006 AT&T formerly known as Cingular Wireless launched Symbian Zone on Cingular devCentral to provide Cingular Deluxe developers with early online access to the latest Symbian OS library for application developers
Feb 2006 Vodafone and Nokia collaborate to increase the use of S60 on Symbian OS as a standard software platform
Nov 2004 NTT DoCoMo selects Symbian OS as one of its primary smartphone development platforms

Japan success

  • A total of 77 Symbian smartphone models have been launched in Japan by Symbian customers Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Nokia, Sharp and Sony Ericsson, up to 31 March 2008
  • 35 million phones based on Symbian OS have shipped in Japan up until the end of March 2008
  • Symbian customers cumulatively shipped 20 million Symbian mobile phones in Japan by the end of Q1 2007 – it took three years to ship the first 10 million units, and less than one year to ship the last 10 million
  • In November 2004, NTT DoCoMo selected Symbian OS as one of its primary smartphone development platforms
  • The first Symbian smartphone shipped in Japan in January 2003

China success

  • Symbian was the leading OS for smartphones in China with a market share of 67.9% (22.3% Linux) in Q108 (Sino Marketing Research Ltd.)
  • The smartphone market in China is set to grow substantially, with forecast shipments projected to reach 14.2% of total phone market in 2010. (Sino Marketing Research Ltd.)
  • Ten Chinese universities have joined the Symbian Academy to date

USA success

  • Symbian partners with over 100 US companies including Dolby, Google, IBM, McAfee, Oracle, RIM, Symantec, Sling Media and Yahoo!
  • In Q108, the US produced the highest number of commercially available applications for Symbian smartphones of any other country
  • US audio technology company Dolby Laboratories joined the Symbian Partner Program in March to offer Symbian licensees the ability to integrate Dolby Mobile into their Symbian OS mobile phones
  • Nokia's N95 8GB US variant began shipping in January offering North American 3G/HSDPA/UMTS compatibility
  • Sony Ericsson began selling its P1i online direct to consumers through its US SonyStyle store
  • Dell, Gateway and Mobile Planet in Q108 ranged the following unlocked Symbian smartphones : Nokia's N95 8GB (NAM), N95 (NAM), N93i, N81 8GB, N82, N78, N76, N75, N73, E90, E65, E61i, E51, 6120 Classic, 5700 XpressMusic; Motorola's Z8, Sony Ericsson's P1i

Analyst Statistics

The following information is based on analyst house independent research and statistics.

Strategy Analytics

"Vendors are measuring success in the smart device market on their ability to drive consumption of rich media content and applications for the consumer. The scale of the opportunity is immense with Strategy Analytics predicting that in 2008 and 2009 combined, 500 million smart devices will be sold globally, more than have been sold cumulatively since the beginning of the decade. This growth will be heavily dependent on selling these rich media smart devices to consumers who are still discovering the value in these devices beyond messaging.  Device vendors who win the lion's share of these sales will successfully raise the bar in the areas of content usability and presentation while leveraging the broadband capabilities of 3G technologies.  While other OS suppliers have their niche, none is further in serving this wider market than Symbian.  With technologies such as ScreenPlay and Freeway, Symbian OS will enable the consumption of rich media on smart devices for the next generation of consumer demand." Chris Ambrosio, Strategy Analytics, Jan 2008

Yankee Group

"Smartphone platform vendors' continuing investment in performance and cost optimization, developer and integration tools, and innovative licensing models has tipped the mass-market volume inflection point. Symbian has led this trend. At the current rate of innovation and proliferation, the open OS segment will surpass the 1 billion cumulative sell-through mark by 2011. At this time, smartphones will comprise over 20% of all handset volumes.

"It's increasingly obvious that proprietary, or organically incubated OS platform strategies are far too costly and time consuming for vendors to develop in a market where cellular and consumer electronics, and the enterprise and consumer applications they support, are becoming one. Symbian OS boasts proven commercial success across form factors, segments, and use cases. It is almost a certainty that Symbian will continue to lead this trend due to its stability, maturity, strong global presence and growing vendor support. Still, between RIM, Symbian, Microsoft, and a host of Linux providers, the market is not zero-sum. We believe the primary growth driver for smartphones is the economic benefit to manufacturers and operators associated with standardized, scalable software architectures. The best platforms will anticipate the multi-faceted nature of the demand side, which includes both operators and consumers. Vendors and operators will enjoy rapid time to market at low cost with services and devices that span the entirety of the market, from basic phones to ultra-high multimedia centric models." John Jackson, Vice President, Enabling Technologies Research, Yankee Group, Jan 2008

"Smartphone will upset traditional business models as carriers get out of the practice of subsidizing handsets in the US. Over the next 18 months, you'll see many of the top-end smartphones offered [by the carriers] subsidy-free in exchange for a greater combination of offerings including one-year contracts or no contracts at all." Andy Castonguay, Yankee Group April 2008

In-Stat

"Smartphone Sales will grow at a rate of more than 30% a year for the next five years.Because of the value users are finding, organizations are slowly taking ownership of smartphones and data applications used for business purposes. Rather than having over complicated reimbursement plans, more organizations are finding it more expedient and economical to treat wireless voice and data services as a business expense when they use smartphones.

"Two key factors will drive the growth (of digital music purchases): global expansion of broadband availability and growth of full-track downloads to mobile handsets in markets other than Japan. Revenue for worldwide full track mobile downloads will reach approximately $4.2 billion by 2012."  Revenue Opportunities Abound In Online and Mobile Music Distribution, In-Stat, Apr08 (Source: http://www.intomobile.com/2008/04/14/in-stat-digital-sales-will-account-for-40-of-all-music-purchases-by-2012.html)

Gartner

"The smartphone market continues to evolve rapidly, with adoption rates, vendor and platform leadership differing by region. We forecast smartphones sales for 2008 will reach about 173 million units, up 42% compared to 2007. By 2010, smartphone sales will surpass 1 billion units cumulatively." Forecast: Smartphones by Operating Systems, Worldwide, 2004-2011

(Source: http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=579907&ref=g_sitelink )

Canalys

"Canalys forecasts that cumulative global shipments of smartphones will pass the one billion mark by 2011. "There is still a long way to go in terms of what smartphones can deliver to businesses and consumers. The potential for applications such as personal navigation, in vehicle and for pedestrians is huge – our end-user research shows there is tremendous interest globally. This will also lay the foundation for a new era in location-based services, in many different forms, and we expect the smartphone to be at the heart of this opportunity. Consumer and professional users’ expectations are also increasing in areas such as advanced phone-based web browsing, remote intranet access and the ability to run customized applications, which will also fuel smartphone growth. In 2007, Symbian had 67% of the worldwide smartphone market and was the clear leader in the Asia-Pacific, EMEA and Latin America regions.” Pete Cunningham, senior analyst at Canalys

* Includes Linux 'closed' phones in Asia and excludes PDAs

[1] IDC: Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker
[2] http://www.telecompaper.com/news/article.aspx?cid=616236
[3] http://www.telecompaper.com/news/article.aspx?cid=616236
[4] http://www.rim.com/news/press/2008/pr-02_04_2008-01.shtml
[5] http://www.deviceguru.com/2008/01/30/124-billion-mobile-phones-expected-to-ship-in-2008/
[6] Gartner "Forecast: Smartphones by Operating System, Worldwide, 2004-2011" by Roberta Cozza, January 2008
[7] http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS21190708

Related content

Symbian unveils Q1 2008 results

Symbian today released unaudited financial and operational figures for the first quarter ended 31 March 2008

Symbian to publish Q1 results

Symbian to publish Q1 2008 financial and operation results

New Symbian Ready program

New Symbian Ready technology validation program

Terms of use | Privacy policy | Sitemap | Media Center | Contact us | © 2008 Symbian