37m Shipped in 2006 YTD; 13m Shipped in Q3 2006 LONDON, November 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Symbian Limited, today announced that 100 million Symbian smartphones have shipped to over 250 network operators worldwide since Symbian's formation. Symbian develops and licenses Symbian OS(TM), 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[1]", said Nigel Clifford. Symbian Outlook "We see two trends driving smartphones onward. The first is that while smartphones have their highest penetration rates in the most saturated and developed markets, the highest future growth rates are likely to be in rapidly developing markets such as China, India and Brazil," said Nigel Clifford. "The developing world will likely account for 50% of smartphone sales within five years as smartphones are a huge opportunity to fast-forward into the information era. The second is the rising youth market, a generation who are demanding the most innovative, fashionable devices and are attracted by the services they can offer." Today - Q3 2006 Financial Highlights Symbian today released the following unaudited financial and operational figures for the third quarter ended 30 September 2006: Q3 2006 financial highlights 2006 2005 Change Q3 Q3 Symbian OS Units 13.0m 8.5m 52% Average Royalty / Unit * US$5.2 US$5.1 Royalty GP% * 93% 86% Turnover GBPm GBPm Royalties * 37.3 23.8 Consulting services 2.3 3.3 Partnering & Other 0.7 0.8 40.3 27.9 44% *Royalties include Symbian OS & UIQ - 13.0 million Symbian smartphone unit shipments in Q3 2006, up 52.0% (Q3 2005 - 8.5m) - 37.0 million Symbian smartphone unit shipments in 2006 (as at end Q3) - Over 100 Symbian smartphone models shipping by 10 licensees - New Symbian smartphone models which commenced shipping in Q3 2006 include the Nokia E62 in the US, Nokia 5500 Sport and SEMC P990 in Europe, as well as several NTT DoCoMo devices for the Japanese market such as the FOMA Raku-Raku PHONE III manufactured by Fujitsu, FOMA SH702iS manufactured by Sharp and FOMA D702iF manufactured by Mitsubishi - Orange specified S60 on Symbian OS as a platform of choice to accelerate the Orange device customization process allowing S60 device manufacturers to benefit from greater cost efficiency and shorter time-to-market and for Symbian developers to collaborate closely with the Orange Partner organization - Cingular launched a new Symbian Zone on Cingular devCentral to provide Cingular Deluxe developers with early online access to the latest Symbian OS Library for Application Developers, which will helps accelerate Symbian application development for phones based on Symbian OS v9 - As of the end of Q3, 6120 third party applications for Symbian smartphones are commercially available, up 39% from Q3 2005 Total Symbian smartphone models shipping at end Q3 End Q3 End Q2 2006 2006 Number of Symbian smartphone models in the market 106 86 Number of licensees with Symbian smartphones in the market 10 10 Number of Symbian smartphone models in development 49 55 Number of licensees with Symbian smartphones in development 8 8 Ecosystem - thank you To celebrate reaching its 100 millionth smartphone shipment and to kick-start the development of the next 100 million phones, Symbian is launching its first coding competition -- Symbian Hundred Million Phones: Because of the Code. Because of the Code is open to all Symbian software developers around the world and involves submitting 100 lines of Symbian C++ code. The competition will run from 16 November to 7 January 2007 and the authors of the top 100 code samples will be awarded the "one-in-100-million" prize, worth over GBP750 and which includes: a Symbian smartphone, a free Accredited Symbian Developer exam sitting, a Symbian Signed test-run, two Symbian books, an invitation to the Symbian party at 3GSM and a Symbian bag of gifts. Non-developers can also join in the celebration with the Symbian Hundred Million Phones quiz for a chance to win one of three Symbian smartphones. The quiz will be available online from 16 November to 16 December and participants who answer the questions correctly will automatically be entered into the free prize draw. Further details can be found at http://www.symbian.com/100million. To view the Symbian Q3 2006 webcast presented by Nigel Clifford, please visit http://www.symbian.com/q32006webcast [1] The Symbian Smartphone Show was held in October in London and hosted 120 exhibitors and received over 3000 delegates over its two days. DATASOURCE: Symbian Ltd CONTACT: Media contacts: Global PR Office, Anatolie Papas, Symbian Ltd, +44-207-154-1383, . US, Valerie Breslow, Breslow Communications, +1-858-337-4217, . Europe, Aleks Vujanic, Burson-Marsteller UK, +44-207-300-6299, . Japan, Hiroko Tanaka, Burson-Marsteller Japan, +81-3-3264-6727,

Copyright