Symbian appoints General Manager, extending Cambridge focus on smartphones

Symbian, the joint venture between Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, Psion and Panasonic, to create 100 new jobs in offices at the Cambridge Science Park

LONDON, UK, June 1st 2000 - Symbian today announces the appointment of Simon Garth as the General Manager for its Cambridge offices. The appointment comes as Symbian continues to expand its operations in line with increasing demand for its software platform, designed for next generation smartphones and communicators. The Cambridge offices will be focused on developing Symbian’s ‘Pearl’ reference design - an operating system, middleware and application suites designed for smartphones. Symbian also licenses two reference designs for more information centric devices. Symbian recently announced that Sony was the latest in a number of licensees to adopt the Pearl reference design.

Based in the Cambridge Science Park, Symbian’s Cambridge office is set for substantial growth to support this segment of the emerging Wireless Information Device market, with an estimated 100 new jobs to be filled over the next year. This growth will be supported by the introduction of intensive training courses for software engineers - Symbian’s ‘Boot Camp’ program, and a number of public seminars focusing on the technology required for next generation smartphones.

"Having grown from 150 personnel in June 1998 to over 560 personnel, we’re continuing to strengthen our world-wide offices as more licensees adopt the Symbian platform," commented Colly Myers, CEO, Symbian. "Continuing our expansion strategy we’re now focusing on the development of our Cambridge resources, by recruiting from the pool of world class software engineers and research scientists, and promoting the development of wireless expertise in the community."

"Symbian will be working in Cambridge to pioneer technology that will drive a mass market for smartphones." said Simon Garth, General Manager of Symbian’s Cambridge offices. "I’ll be overseeing the rapid expansion of these facilities, and building on existing relationships with local companies. We’re extending a warm welcome to software engineers to come to our training sessions, and find out how Symbian is powering the heart of the wireless community."

The Symbian seminars, led by leading industry experts, have been scheduled for the following dates:

7th June	Smartphone technology advanced clients in your hands
22nd June	Advances in Personal Area Networking
5th July	Packet data and 3rd generation mobile communications
19th July	Java for mobile devices

More information on these seminars and the Symbian ‘Boot Camp’ program, as well as up-to-date listings on vacancies at the Cambridge and other Symbian world-wide offices can be found on Symbian’s website  Symbian

Notes to editors

Symbian will be holding a press briefing at its Cambridge offices at 16:00 on Thursday, June 1st. The address for the offices is:

Unit 314
Cambridge Science Park
Milton Road
Cambridge
England, UK

About Symbian

Symbian owns, licenses, develops and supports leading software, user interfaces, application frameworks and development tools for Wireless Information Devices such as communicators and smartphones. Symbian aims to promote standards for the interoperability of Wireless Information Devices with wireless networks, content services, and messaging and enterprise wide solutions.

With headquarters in London, Symbian has offices in Tokyo and Kanazawa, Japan; Ronneby, Sweden; Cambridge, UK and San Francisco Bay Area, USA. Symbian is owned by Ericsson, Matsushita, Motorola, Nokia and Psion.
Symbian

Symbian, the Symbian platform and other Symbian marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symbian Ltd. All other products and services mentioned are trademarks of their respective companies.

Media Enquiries

Please direct enquiries to: Symbian Ltd +44 207 154 1383 press@symbian.com