Smartphone industry gathers for Symbian Expo

Symbian CEO keynote gives latest Symbian OS products in development numbers; targets 200m unit market in 2008/2009; outlines Symbian strategy to address mid-tier phone market

Symbian Expo, London, UK – 5 October 2004 – Symbian, developer of Symbian OS, the market-leading mobile phone operating system today opened the Symbian Expo – the smartphone show. Expo – the smartphone show is the only event dedicated entirely to the global smartphone industry, bringing together companies from every segment of the Symbian OS smartphone market, from building Symbian OS mobile phones to developing and deploying Symbian OS applications to mobile phone users.

Sponsored by leading companies from every sector of the mobile industry – Texas Instruments, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, UIQ Technology, IBM, Metrowerks, Vodafone and Carphone Warehouse – the show has attracted more than 3,500 mobile industry professionals who have registered to attend the event’s keynote sessions, view an exhibition show floor that features more than 150 companies, as well as attending free seminars and Symbian OS training sessions.

Talking about Symbian Expo in his keynote address David Levin, CEO, Symbian Ltd said:

“Symbian Expo – the smartphone show perfectly reflects Symbian’s approach to the market. Expo isn’t just about Symbian – Expo is about bringing together companies from every segment of the smartphone market to build business around Symbian and Symbian OS.

With Symbian OS shipments growing fast – 5 million Symbian OS phones shipped in the first half of 2004 alone, taking the Symbian OS installed base to more than 15m – more and more companies in the Symbian ecosystem are working successfully to grow their businesses around Symbian and Symbian OS.”

Updating information on Symbian OS products shipping and in development, Levin said:

“At the beginning of October 2004, six Symbian OS Licensees were shipping 27 phones to more than 200 network operators and to retailers around the world. This compares to 23 products from 6 licensees at the end of Q2 2004.

At the end of Q3 2004, ten Symbian OS licensees were developing 40 phones for all types of network technology, for launch around the world over the next 12 to 18 months. This compares to 34 products from ten licensees at the end of the second quarter.”

Commenting on Symbian’s strategy to drive Symbian OS into mid-range markets, Levin commented:

“The five million phones shipped by Symbian OS licensees in the first half of this year is an achievement. But set against the size of the overall phone market, our success is modest; we’re just getting started.

We believe that by 2008 or 2009 the addressable market – the number of phones with a hardware specification capable of running Symbian OS could reach as many as 200 million phones.

That is the market we are going for over the next five years. In July Symbian’s shareholders backed Symbian with new investment totalling almost $100m to enable Symbian to take full advantage of this market opportunity.”

Levin went on to outline Symbian’s current development and market activities:

“We’re accelerating Symbian OS development generally – our headcount will rise from around 900 to just about 1,200 by the end of next year.

We’re also focusing on a set of very specific development activities designed to make Symbian OS the toughest third party OS competitor in those mid-tier, higher volume markets.

Rather than using in-house proprietary operating systems, we are helping our licensees make the decision to use Symbian OS, enabling them to take the technologies and capabilities of today’s high-end phones and put them into mid-tier, lower cost, higher volume phones that meet the needs of their network operator customers.”

Levin highlighted Symbian’s joint announcement today with Intel and Nokia:

“Today Intel announced its investment in a Symbian OS reference platform for 3G phones to be co-developed with Symbian. The development of reference designs that integrate Symbian OS and silicon hardware is an important step towards enabling accelerated time to market and reduced development costs for Symbian OS phones. Symbian OS licensees will be able to focus more of their development on differentiating features and technologies and less on low level integration.”
 

About Symbian Ltd

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 handset manufacturers. The following Symbian OS licensees have Symbian OS-based mobile phones in production and development: Arima, BenQ, Fujitsu for NTT DoCoMo FOMA, LG, Lenovo, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Sendo, Siemens, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. In 2003, over 6.67 million Symbian OS-based mobile phones were sold worldwide and more than 15 million have been sold to date.

Symbian has its headquarters in London, United Kingdom with offices in the United States, Europe and Asia (Bangalore, Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo).

http://www.symbian.com/
press@symbian.com

About Symbian Expo

Symbian Expo – the smartphone show, Symbian’s sixth annual Expo is the only event dedicated entirely to the global smartphone industry. It covers every aspect of the smartphone market, from building mobile phones themselves to developing and deploying applications to mobile phone users and takes place at the ExCel Centre in London, UK, on 5th and 6th October 2004

Media Enquiries

Anatolie Papas Global PR Manager Symbian +44 7810 697 306 press@symbian.com