Dr. Dobb's | Symbian OS Passes 100 Million Mark

Symbian OS Passes 100 Million Mark

37 million smartphones shipped in 2006; 13 million in Q3 alone

November 16, 2006
URL:http://drdobbs.com/symbian-os-passes-100-million-mark/194400498

With all the focus on the impending release of Microsoft's Windows Vista, not to mention the company's new love affair with Linux, it easy to forget that there are other operating systems out there that are doing just fine, thank you.

Well, actually better than "just fine." Take Symbian OS, the operating system for smartphone and other mobile devices. So how is it doing? According to Symbian Limited, more than 100 million Symbian-based smartphones have shipped since Symbian's formation in 1998.

"Hitting the 100 million mark with over 100 different models currently shipping from 10 leading handset vendors is a phenomenal achievement for Symbian and a strong indication that more and more people are embracing the smartphone lifestyle," said Nigel Clifford, CEO, Symbian.

Since the first Symbian OS phone -- the Ericsson R380 -- shipped in 2000, Symbian-based smartphones have been manufactured by BenQ, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Sendo, Sharp, Siemens, and Sony Ericsson. Nokia alone manufactures 10 Symbian OS cell phones per second and has shipped more than 70 million Symbian OS-based S60-enabled devices. To date, 44 Nokia devices based on Symbian OS have been been launched.

According to Canalys Research, Nokia's Symbian-based S60 commands 51 percent worldwide market share for converged devices. Other Symbian-based smartphones make up 22 percent market share, leaving 27 percent for other operating system vendors (Palm, Microsoft, Linux, and others). In addition, Orange, a brand of the France Telecom Group which has 149 million customers on five continents, recently announced a collaboration with Nokia to create Orange-specific software development packages to complement Nokia's Symbian OS.

According to Andy Brown, mobile devices specialist at IDC, the smartphone market is entering a new era of lower cost, higher volume devices. Brown predicts that cumulative sales of smartphones will reach over 1 billion units by 2011. "The smartphone segment of the handset market is seeing strong annual growth and is expected to rise from 57 million units in 2005 to around 250 million units by the end of 2010. The advent of single chip designs will inevitably attract a growing number of licensees and drive greater penetration into the mid-market," says Brown.

"We see two trends driving smartphones onward. The first is that while smartphones have their highest penetration rates in the most saturated and developed markets, the highest future growth rates are likely to be in rapidly developing markets such as China, India and Brazil," said Nigel Clifford. "The developing world will likely account for 50 percent of smartphone sales within five years as smartphones are a huge opportunity to fast-forward into the information era. The second is the rising youth market, a generation who are demanding the most innovative, fashionable devices and are attracted by the services they can offer."