Symbian welcomes BT's plans to help manage the delivery of content and applications to Symbian OS phones

BT Joins Symbian Platinum Program

London, UK – 8th May 2006 - Symbian Limited today welcomed BT's announcement that it has joined the Symbian Platinum Program to support the growing market for phones based on Symbian OS™. As a Platinum Partner, BT will harness the opportunities of being able to rapidly develop converged services for its customers using Symbian OS phones. 

Symbian develops and licenses Symbian OS, the operating system that powers today’s most popular smartphones.  Symbian OS is licensed by the world’s leading mobile phone manufacturers and to date, as of Q4 2005 almost 60 million phones based on Symbian OS have shipped worldwide to over 250 major network operators.

Symbian OS phones are growing in popularity. During 2005, Symbian OS phone shipments grew more than 136% compared to the previous year.  According to technology analyst firm Gartner, by the end of 2006 global smartphone sales will reach 87m with Symbian OS owning 83% of the market share at 72 million units.

BT Group
"This partnership reflects our commitment to further enhance our mobile services strategy," said Matt Walker, head of the devices research group, BT Group Chief Technology Office . "We want to enable third-parties to rapidly develop services that can run over 21CN, and open operating systems for mobile devices can play a key role in this. As Symbian is the market leader in the mobile open OS market, becoming a Platinum Partner offers many opportunities for BT in this area.  We will also benefit from Symbian’s technical support for our prototyping activities.”

Symbian Ltd.
“We are delighted that BT has joined the Platinum Partner Program,” said Simon Garth, VP of Marketing, Symbian Ltd . “Integrating Symbian OS powered devices into its 21CN IP based network will enable BT to deliver a compelling array of new multimedia services to its customers, wherever they are and whenever they need them – whether in the living room or on the go.  Furthermore, we believe the openness of Symbian OS, combined with the size of BT’s customer base will attract a huge number of content partners and application developers in to the growing segment for converged services.”

Notes to Editors

About the Symbian Platinum Program

The Symbian Platinum Program includes companies that have a technology or strategic position that is key to the success of mobile computing technology surrounding Symbian OS. As part of the program, Platinum Partners benefit from a range of commercial services, including technical support and joint marketing opportunities as well as privileged access to Symbian OS source code and a dedicated Partner Support team. Symbian Platinum Program

About BT

BT is one of the world’s leading providers of communications solutions and services operating in more than 160 Countries.  Its principal activities include networked IT services, local, national and international telecommunications services, and higher-value broadband and internet products and services.  BT consists principally of four lines of business: BT Global Services, Openreach, BT Retail and BT Wholesale.

In the year ended 31 March 2005, BT Group’s revenue was £18,623 million with profit before taxation of £2,354 million.

British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group.  BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York. BT  

About Symbian Ltd

Symbian is a software licensing company that develops and licenses Symbian OS, the market leading open operating system for advanced, data-enabled mobile phones also known as smartphones.

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.  In 2005, 34 million Symbian OS mobile phones were sold worldwide to over 250 network operators, bringing the total number of Symbian OS phones shipped to almost 60 million.

Symbian has its headquarters in London, United Kingdom with offices in the United States, Europe (England and Sweden (UIQ Technology AB)), Israel and Asia (India, P.R. China, Korea, and Japan). Symbian

BT

Suzy Christopher ,
Senior PR and communications manager,
BT Group Chief Technology Office,
+44 7885 652 235 suzanne.christopher@bt.com

Jonny Rosemont ,
Bite PR,
+44 208 834  Jonny.rosemont@bitepr.com

Media Enquiries

Aleks Vujanic Burson-Marsteller UK +44 20 7300 6299 symbian_pressuk@uk.bm.com