Symbian reports first quarter results for 2008

LONDON, United Kingdom - 20 May 2008 - Symbian Limited, the market leader in open operating systems for mobile phones, today released the following unaudited financial and operational figures for the first quarter ended 31 March 2008:

Symbian Limited unaudited Q1 2008 financial highlights

 

	Q1 2008	Q1 2007	YoY change
Symbian OS Units	18.5m	15.9m	+16.5%
Average Royalty / Unit *	US$4.1	US$4.5
Royalty GP% *	97%	93%
Turnover
Royalties *	37.9	37.9
Consulting Services	4.8	2.5
Partnering & Other	0.8	0.9
Total	43.5	41.3

 

Total Symbian phone models shipping at end Q1 2008

 

	End Q1 2008	End Q1 2007	YoY change
Number of Symbian phone models in the market	154	114	+35%
Number of Symbian phone models in the market since formation of Symbian	235	168	+40%
Number of licensees with Symbian phone in the market	8	8
Number of Symbian phone models in development	70	63	+11%

Highlights – Q1 2008 as at 31 March 2008

• 206 million cumulative Symbian OS shipments across 235 different phone models since the formation of Symbian
• 18.5 million Symbian mobile phones shipped to consumers worldwide – a 16.5% increase on Q1 2007 (15.9m)
• 92% growth in consulting services from £2.5 million in Q1 2007 to £4.8 million in Q1 2008 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 Q1 2008 through over 250 major network operators by 6 licensees - Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Nokia, Samsung, Sharp, and Sony Ericsson - there were 14 models in Q1 2007
• 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

Nigel Clifford, Symbian CEO, commented

“We are pleased to report yet another significant milestone for Symbian. With our customers shipping a total of 18.5 million Symbian mobile phones through over 250 major network operators globally in the quarter, we have now surpassed the 200 million cumulative shipment mark. In fact, by the end of the quarter, a cumulative total of 206 million Symbian mobile phones have been shipped by the world’s leading handset manufacturers and each of our licensees has shipped a new Symbian mobile phone model since the beginning of 2008.

The world’s five leading handset vendors announced nine products based on Symbian OS v9 during Q1 2008 including 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. We also experienced an increased demand for consulting services which indicates a broadening and deepening customer phone project pipeline.”

Q1 shipments – a wealth of new models

Eight handset manufacturers launched 13 new Symbian models (multiple variants not included) bringing the total number of models in the market at the end of Q1 2008 to 154 with a total of 235 models shipped since the formation of Symbian. These cover a broad range of market segments and form factors including high-end converged devices, smartphones and mid-range mobile phones. The majority of these new phones are based on Symbian OS v9 including Symbian’s latest product offering, Symbian OS v9.3, which is currently shipping in Japan. At Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona in February, four licensees announced a total of eight new mobile phones based on Symbian OS.

Technology highlights - investing to meet future consumer demands

To stay ahead of consumer and customer demands, Symbian is constantly innovating and adding to its technology portfolio.

At CTIA in Las Vegas in March 2008, we announced Symbian SQL, a robust and highly scalable database management system for Symbian OS. Symbian SQL makes retrieving and sorting terabytes of data and multimedia fast and efficient without compromising performance.

With analysts predicting smartphone shipments to reach approximately 30% of all mobile phone sales by 2013 (ABI Research, March 2008) and with 2007 estimates of around 4 million navigation solutions sales based on GPS-enabled smartphones - the majority of which were based on Symbian OS – we also announced the most advanced mobile OS LBS architecture at CTIA. With this new technology, handset manufacturers do not need to invest separately in developing location support, dramatically reducing the time it takes to create GPS-enabled devices, while developers can cost-effectively target their LBS applications across multiple Symbian OS platforms. Mobile phones featuring Symbian’s LBS offering were recently launched in Japan.

Symbian Outlook – beyond the smartphone space

“Symbian continues to lead the smartphone OS market but is focused on increasing its share of the overall mobile phone market from 7% at the end of 2007” (Source: Strategy Analytics), said Nigel Clifford.

“For the past ten years, helping our customers succeed has been our number one priority. Deploying Symbian OS helps our licensees to differentiate their devices and deliver faster shipment times-to-market across multiple market segments as well as benefiting from Symbian's superiority in platform quality, features and power management.”

“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.”

- ENDS -

Notes to Editors

Definitions and Additional Information
Royalty Revenue - Symbian receives a royalty on each phone based on Symbian OS shipped by licensees. From Symbian OS v7.0, the royalty has been set at $7.25 per unit for the first 2 million units shipped by a licensee and $5 per unit thereafter. From v9.0 onwards after 1 July 2006, licensees can choose a pricing model based on either (a) a fraction of the trade price of devices shipping; or (b) an annual volume ratchet pricing structure.

Royalty Gross Profit - Symbian in-sources certain technologies when either:
i) there is already an appropriate industry standard developed by another party; or
ii) technology can be more efficiently provided by an outside supplier (e.g. WAP / web browsers; personal computer connectivity) and, in both cases, where Symbian considers that such technologies should form part of Symbian OS to satisfy market and licensees' requirements.

Consulting Revenue - Symbian undertakes consultancy activities to assist its licensees to implement Symbian OS in new handsets. Symbian prices such services to cover direct costs as such activities are primarily in support of licensees’ adoption of Symbian OS. The level of consulting revenue will fluctuate depending upon: (a) the volume of new engagements with licensees; (b) the ability of licensees to develop new Symbian OS phones without the assistance of Symbian; and (c) the ability of Symbian Competence Centers to provide support for licensee product development.

Phone models - Symbian defines phone models on the basis that the following conditions are satisfied:

- the device is manufactured in commercial quantities; and
- the device is available in retail channels; and
- the device has a unique model identifier and/or is a publicly announced variant or derivative: US with 850 MHz radio, China, Japan or CDMA. (Up to two variants or derivatives from the following segments: US, China, Japan, CDMA; public announcement on the part of the licensee must be fully auditable through licensee's marketing collateral or web content)

Partnering & Other Revenue - Symbian derives a further revenue stream from training activities, partner activities (including the Symbian Partner Program) and trade shows (including the Symbian Smartphone Show held in October each year). These activities are designed to promote Symbian OS and are therefore not net profit earning for Symbian.

Models in development - Models in development are defined by Symbian as phones prior to launch where licensees a) have committed a minimum development team; and b) have a visible plan to launch; and c) have a minimum expected lifetime shipment for the phone. The determination of phones in development is at the discretion of Symbian.

With more and more Symbian models being launched by licensees, such licensees are becoming experienced in developing new Symbian models with only limited or no direct Symbian assistance. As a result, Symbian is not always aware of new models prior to their market launch. Symbian is keen to ensure that licensees are able to launch new models more quickly and easily and encourages licensees to build up appropriate internal capabilities and experience in developing with Symbian OS. Therefore, the number of new models in development known to Symbian at the reporting date is becoming a less accurate forward-looking indicator of new Symbian licensee models coming to market.

Number of Symbian OS Applications - Symbian tracks the number of commercially available Symbian OS applications. This is done through monitoring the applications offered for sale by a wide range of on-line, commercial distributors of Symbian OS applications.
To be included in the count of Symbian OS applications, an application must be offered for sale by a company, not by an individual alone.
Applications which are offered for sale but which do not meet these criteria are regarded as "Shareware". Symbian maintains separate counts for "Shareware", "Freeware" and "Open Source" applications.
Only applications written for, or specifically shown to work on, Symbian OS phones are included in the Symbian OS application count. The count includes applications written using any of the wide variety of programming languages supported by Symbian OS, including C++, Java (pJava or MIDP), AppForge Crossfire and OPL.
The number of Symbian OS applications does NOT include Java MIDlets that have not been developed specifically for, nor have been explicitly validated as running on, Symbian OS phones. It is therefore likely that there are many additional Java MIDlet applications that will run on Symbian OS phones.

About Symbian Limited

Symbian is a software licensing company that develops and licenses Symbian OS, the market-leading open operating system for mobile phones.

Symbian licenses Symbian OS to the world's leading handset manufacturers and has built close co-operative business relationships with leading companies across the mobile industry. During Q1 2008, 18.5 million Symbian mobile phones were sold worldwide to over 250 major network operators, bringing the total number of units shipped up to 31 March 2008 to 206 million.

Symbian has its headquarters in London, United Kingdom, with offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Asia (India, P.R. China, and Korea) and Japan. For more information, please visit www.symbian.com.

Media Enquiries

Antonia Graham Global Symbian +44 20 7154 1000 press@symbian.com	Valerie Breslow US V. Breslow Communications +1 858 337 4217 valbreslow@earthlink.net
Yukari Majima Japan Burson-Marsteller +81 3 3264 6782 symbian.pr@bm.com	Joy Tian China Edelman China +86 10 6530 8590 X 247 symbian.pr@edelman.com

Recent news

Symbian to publish Q2 & H1 2008 results

Symbian will release its second quarter and first half 2008 financial and operational results on 2 September

FOMA™ NM706i launched

FOMA NM706i based on Symbian OS starts shipping in Japan 8 August

FOMA Raku-Raku PHONE V on Symbian OS

NTT DOCOMO’s launch of the FOMA Raku-Raku PHONE V based on Symbian OS starts shipping in Japan today