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BARCELONA, Spain and LONDON, United Kingdom - 12 February, 2008 - Symbian Limited, developer and licensor of Symbian OS™, the market-leading open operating system for mobile phones, today released the following unaudited financial and operational figures for the fourth quarter and the full year ended 30 December 2007:
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2007 |
2006 |
Q4 YoY Change |
2007 |
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Symbian OS Units |
22.4m |
14.6m |
53% |
20.4m |
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Average Royalty / Unit |
US$4.3 |
US$5.1 |
US$4.8 |
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Royalty GP% |
96% |
93% |
95% |
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Turnover |
£m |
£m |
£m |
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Royalties |
52.7 |
40.9 |
48.2 |
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Consulting services |
3.0 |
3.5 |
2.7 |
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Partnering & Other |
0.8 |
1.0 |
1.5 |
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56.5 |
45.4 |
24% |
52.4 |
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End Q4 2007 |
End Q4 2006 |
Q4 YoY
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Number of Symbian smartphone models in the market |
141 |
108 |
31% |
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Number of licensees with Symbian smartphones in the market |
8 |
9 |
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Number of Symbian smartphone models in development |
69 |
56 |
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Number of licensees with Symbian smartphones in development |
8 |
8 |
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2007 |
2006 |
YoY Change |
2005 |
2004 |
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Symbian OS Units |
77.3m |
51.7m |
50% |
34.0m |
14.4m |
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Average Royalty / Unit |
US$4.5 |
US$5.3 |
US$5.2 |
US$5.7 |
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Royalty GP% |
94% |
91% |
85% |
84% |
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Turnover |
£m |
£m |
£m |
£m |
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Royalties |
179.1 |
151.8 |
96.8 |
45.2 |
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Consulting services |
10.8 |
10.7 |
14.1 |
17.5 |
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Partnering & Other |
4.4 |
3.7 |
3.9 |
3.8 |
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194.3 |
166.2 |
17% |
114.8 |
66.5 |
Nigel Clifford, Symbian CEO, commented:
"I am very pleased to report continued growth for Symbian throughout 2007 with a total of 77.3 million mobile phones based on Symbian OS in 2007, 22.4m shipments in Q4 alone. In 2007, Symbian's total revenues grew to £194.3 million - an increase of 17% on 2006.
Symbian aims to grow its share of the mobile phone market by increasingly driving Symbian OS into mid-range phone segments while maintaining the leading high end feature set used in the most advanced phones. Assuming Strategy Analytics' total global phone market of 1.13 billion in 2007, Symbian's share of the market grew from 5% in 2006, to 7% in 2007.
Since the first shipment of a Symbian phone in 2000 the world's leading handset manufacturers have shipped a total of 188 million phones based on Symbian OS. They continue to benefit from Symbian's lead in performance, features and power efficiency for the converged mobile phone market. They are also benefiting from the scalability of Symbian OS, deploying it in mass market phones to help differentiate their devices and deliver faster shipment times-to-market."
In Q4 2007 22.4 million Symbian OS based phones were shipped, representing a 53% increase on Q4 2006 (14.6m). 20 new models based on Symbian OS commenced shipment in Q4 2007, bringing the total number of models in the market at the end of Q4 2007 to 141 and a total of 222 models shipped since the formation of Symbian. These cover a broad range of market segments and form factors. Some of the new Symbian smartphones launched in Q4 2007 include: FOMA™ D905i, FOMA SH905i, FOMA F905i, FOMA SO905i, FOMA F801i, Nokia N95 8GB, Nokia 6110 Navigator China, Nokia E51, Nokia N82, Nokia N81 8GB, Samsung i450, Samsung i550, and Samsung i400, and Sony Ericsson W960i.
There are now 8,736 third party Symbian applications commercially available, an increase of 27% on 31 December 2006 (6,896 applications).
During 2007, Symbian announced new Symbian OS technologies aimed at continuing Symbian's position at the leading edge of mobile computing, including:
Symbian announced in January 2008 that by the end of November 2007, over 30 million Japanese mobile phones based on Symbian OS have shipped in Japan. To date, a total of 69 models have launched in Japan by six of our customers: Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Nokia, Sharp and Sony Ericsson.
Nigel Clifford continued:
"Symbian's Japanese customers and partners are of clear strategic importance to Symbian. The Japanese market is very advanced in showing consumers the potential of mobile phones."
In January 2007 Symbian expanded its sales and marketing presence in Beijing and in August, opened a global R&D center in the city. In November, Symbian completed the transfer of management and software engineers from MoGenesis. The Chinese R&D center is Symbian's fourth with two located in the United Kingdom and one in India. It plays a key role in the Company's continued development of Symbian OS. Symbian has focused heavily on the Symbian Academy program in China with close collaboration with nine local universities. The Symbian Academy is designed to assist and encourage universities creating courses that teach Symbian software development and to introduce a Symbian program into existing computer science courses.
"The new R&D center in Beijing will contribute significantly to the Symbian OS roadmap to meet the needs of our customers today as well as the demands of the global mass market for the next generation of converged mobile devices," said Nigel Clifford.
Analysts are predicting 1 billion mobile phones based on an advanced open operating system will be in the market by end of 2011 - which is excellent news for Symbian's ecosystem and Symbian itself. Symbian considers the overall phone market to be its field of play and is looking to continue to increase its share of the mobile phone market, currently at 7%.
"I am very excited by the potential in this marketplace - in terms of technology, market size, market trends and our position in the market," says Nigel Clifford. "With, insights and commitment from the world's leading handset vendors, continued success in major markets such as Japan and China, and a vibrant ecosystem as demonstrated at the October Symbian Smartphone Show and the November Symbian Tokyo Summit, I am determined that Symbian will continue to lead the smartphone market and grow our share of the overall mobile market."
"We look forward to an exciting year ahead with new innovative, differentiated and attractive phones in the pipeline for many market segments and regions".
Royalty Revenue - Symbian receives a royalty on each phone based on Symbian OS shipped by licensees. From Symbian OS v7.0 the royalty has been set at $7.25 per unit for the first 2 million units shipped by a licensee and $5 per unit thereafter. From v9.0 onwards after 1 July 2006, licensees can choose a pricing model based on either (a) a fraction of the trade price of devices shipping; or (b) an annual volume ratchet pricing structure.
Royalty Gross Profit - Symbian in-sources certain technologies when either:
i) there is already an appropriate industry standard developed by another party; or
ii) technology can be more efficiently provided by an outside supplier (e.g. WAP / web browsers; personal computer connectivity) and, in both cases, where Symbian considers that such technologies should form part of Symbian OS to satisfy market and licensees' requirements.
Consulting Revenue - Symbian undertakes consultancy activities to assist its licensees implement Symbian OS in new handsets. Symbian prices such services to cover costs but, such activities are primarily in support of licensees adoption of Symbian OS. The level of consulting revenue will fluctuate depending upon: (a) the volume of new engagements with licensees; (b) the ability of licensees to develop new Symbian OS phones without the assistance of Symbian; and (c) the ability of Symbian Competence Centres to provide support for licensee product development.
Phone models - Symbian defines phone models on the basis that the following conditions are satisfied:
- the device is manufactured in commercial quantities; and
- the device is available in retail channels; and
- the device has a unique model identifier and/or is a publicly announced variant or derivative: US with 850 MHz radio, China, Japan or CDMA. (Up to two variants or derivatives from the following segments: US, China, Japan, CDMA; public announcement on the part of the licensee must be fully auditable through licensee's marketing collateral or web content)
Partnering & Other Revenue - Symbian derives a further revenue stream from training activities, partner activities (including the Symbian Platinum Partner Program) and trade shows (including the Symbian Smartphone Show held in October). These activities are designed to promote Symbian OS and are therefore priced to enable cost recovery only.
Models in development - Models in development are defined by Symbian as phones prior to launch where licensees a) have committed a minimum development team; and b) have a visible plan to launch; and c) have a minimum expected lifetime shipment for the phone. The determination of phones in development is at the discretion of Symbian.
With more and more Symbian models being launched by licensees, such licensees are becoming experienced in developing new Symbian models with only limited or no direct Symbian assistance. As a result, Symbian is not always aware of new models prior to their market launch. Symbian is keen to ensure that licensees are able to quickly and easily launch new models and encourages licensees to build up appropriate internal capabilities and experience in developing with Symbian OS. Therefore, the number of new models in development known to Symbian at the reporting date is becoming a less accurate forward looking indicator of new Symbian licensee models coming to market.
Number of Symbian OS Applications - Symbian tracks the number of commercially available Symbian OS applications. This is done through monitoring the applications offered for sale by a wide range of on-line, commercial distributors of Symbian OS applications.
To be included in the count of Symbian OS applications, an application must be offered for sale by a company, not by an individual alone.
Applications which are offered for sale but which do not meet these criteria are regarded as "Shareware". Symbian maintains separate counts for "Shareware", "Freeware" and "Open Source" applications.
Only applications written for, or specifically shown to work on, Symbian OS phones are included in the Symbian OS application count. The count includes applications written using any of the wide variety of programming languages supported by Symbian OS, including C++, Java (pJava or MIDP), AppForge Crossfire and OPL.
The number of Symbian OS applications does NOT include Java MIDlets that have not been developed specifically for, nor have been explicitly validated as running on, Symbian OS phones. It is therefore likely that there are many additional Java MIDlet applications that will run on Symbian OS phones.
Symbian is a software licensing company that develops and licenses Symbian OS, the market-leading open operating system for advanced, data-enabled mobile phones 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. During Q4 2007, 22.4 million Symbian smartphones were sold worldwide to over 250 major network operators, bringing the total number of Symbian smartphones shipped up to 31 December 2007 to 188 million.
Symbian has its headquarters in London, United Kingdom, with offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Asia (India, P.R. China, and Korea) and Japan. For more information, please visit www.symbian.com.
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Karen Hamblen
Global Symbian Ltd +44 207 154 1000 press@symbian.com |
Valerie Breslow
US V Breslow Communications +1 858 337 4217 valbreslow@earthlink.net |
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Sarah Yems
Europe Catalysis +44 20 7101 7340 symbian@catalysis.co.uk |
Hideyo Muto
Japan Burson-Marsteller Japan +81 3 3264 6566 symbian.pr@bm.com |
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Joy Tian
China Edelman China +86 10 6530 8590 x 274 symbian.pr@edelman.com |
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