Symbian OS applications sales increased 240% in 2003 through Handango and its channel partners

Customers buy more apps for Symbian OS phones than any other phone OS

3GSM World Congress, Cannes, France – 23 February 2004 – Symbian Limited today announces that Symbian OS™ applications are the most downloaded smartphone applications on Handango, the leading provider of mobile downloads for phones and handhelds. Furthermore, Handango’s Symbian OS application sales increased at an average of 20% each month in 2003, with customers purchasing 12% more applications (in USD) for Symbian OS phones than for other leading mobile devices.

Symbian develops and licenses Symbian OS, the open standard operating system for smartphones. Handango is a Symbian Platinum Partner. As a Platinum Partner, Handango continues to support Symbian's ecosystem of developers, partners and licensees by delivering thousands of Symbian OS applications to customers through its market-leading application management and provisioning platform, Handango AMPP.

In 2003, the number of third party applications for Symbian OS available on Handango increased by 155%. Handango customers bought more applications on average for Symbian OS phones per order than any other OS and these applications had the second highest average selling price (ASP) for any OS. These statistics demonstrate the value that Symbian OS applications and phones bring to their users. In Q3 and Q4 2003, the Sony Ericsson P800 /P900 smartphone was the top phone for application purchases. For 2003, the Nokia 7650/3650 was one of the top five phones for application purchases on Handango.

Handango
"Handango is dedicated to providing mobile operators, device manufacturers and their customers with a flexible, open way to find and download Symbian OS applications,” said Randy Eisenman, president and chief executive officer of Handango. “We are delighted to be involved in driving the success of the Symbian ecosystem.”

Symbian
"We are very pleased by the remarkable success of Symbian OS applications,” said Marit Døving, EVP Marketing, Symbian. “The explosive growth and demand for third party applications based on Symbian OS is further validation of Symbian’s unique position to add value and create commercial opportunities for both the Symbian ecosystem and the wider mobile industry.” 

About Symbian

Symbian is a software licensing company that develops and licenses Symbian OS, the global open industry standard operating system for advanced, data-enabled mobile phones.

Symbian licenses Symbian OS to the world's leading mobile phone manufacturers including Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Siemens and Sony Ericsson. Publicly announced products based on Symbian OS include the BenQ P30, Motorola A920 and A925 for 3, Sendo X, Siemens SX-1, NTT DoCoMo FOMA F900i, F2102V and F2051 built by Fujitsu, Sony Ericsson P800 and P900 Smartphones, Nokia 9200 Communicator range as well as the 7700, 7650, 6600, 6620, 3650/3600, 3660/3620 and N-Gage.

Symbian has its headquarters in London, United Kingdom with offices in the US, Europe and Asia.

  Symbian
  press@symbian.com