100 million Symbian smartphones shipped

Symbian Limited, today announced that 100 million Symbian smartphones have shipped to over 250 network operators worldwide since Symbian’s formation.Symbian develops and licenses Symbian OS, the market-leading operating system for advanced, data-enabled mobile phones known as smartphones to the world’s leading handset manufacturers.“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. However, we are still at the beginning of a technology revolution that will change peoples’ lives profoundly,” said Nigel Clifford, CEO, Symbian.The smartphone market is entering a new era of lower cost, higher volume devices. Andy Brown, mobile devices specialist at IDC, a leading global IT market intelligence company, predicts that cumulative sales of smartphones will reach over 1 billion units by 2011. He comments, “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.Since the first Symbian OS phone, the Ericsson R380, shipped in 2000 Symbian has worked with an ecosystem of customers, partners, vendors, content players and application developers within a market place demanding ever increasing segmentation and customisation. This increased complexity has driven the demand for a powerful, robust, open operating system such as Symbian OS. Today, 100 million Symbian smartphones have sold around the world including devices manufactured by BenQ, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Sendo, Sharp, Siemens, and Sony Ericsson.“Reaching the 100 million milestone is not Symbian’s achievement alone. We thank our customers and network operators for their support. We also thank Symbian developers for driving innovation in the smartphone market and our close network of 300 Symbian Platinum Partners, in particular our vital user interface partners in S60, UIQ and MOAP that continue to develop new software solutions and award winning applications for Symbian OS. Our combined efforts result in compelling, innovative and differentiated phones as demonstrated last month at the biggest yet Symbian Smartphone Show”, said Nigel Clifford.The Symbian Smartphone Show was held in October in London and hosted 120 exhibitors and received over 3000 delegates over its two days.Symbian Outlook“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% 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.”Today – Q3 2006 Financial HighlightsSymbian today released the following unaudited financial and operational figures for the third quarter ended 30 September 2006:Q3 2006 financial highlights 2006 Q3 2005 Q3 Change Symbian OS Units 13.0m 8.5m 52% Average Royalty / Unit * US$5.2 US$5.1 Royalty GP% * 93% 86% Turnover £m £m Royalties * 37.3 23.8 Consulting services 2.3 3.3 Partnering & Other 0.7 0.8 40.3 27.9 44% *Royalties include Symbian OS & UIQ 13.0 million Symbian smartphone unit shipments in Q3 2006, up 52.0% (Q3 2005 – 8.5m) 37.0 million Symbian smartphone unit shipments in 2006 (as at end Q3) Over 100 Symbian smartphone models shipping by 10 licensees New Symbian smartphone models which commenced shipping in Q3 2006 include the Nokia E62 in the US, Nokia 5500 Sport and SEMC P990 in Europe, as well as several NTT DoCoMo devices for the Japanese market such as the FOMA Raku-Raku PHONE III manufactured by Fujitsu, FOMA SH702iS manufactured by Sharp and FOMA D702iF manufactured by Mitsubishi Orange specified S60 on Symbian OS as a platform of choice to accelerate the Orange device customization process allowing S60 device manufacturers to benefit from greater cost efficiency and shorter time-to-market and for Symbian developers to collaborate closely with the Orange Partner organization Cingular launched a new Symbian Zone on Cingular devCentral to provide Cingular Deluxe developers with early online access to the latest Symbian OS Library for Application Developers, which will helps accelerate Symbian application development for phones based on Symbian OS v9 As of the end of Q3, 6120 third party applications for Symbian smartphones are commercially available, up 39% from Q3 2005Total Symbian smartphone models shipping at end Q3 End Q3 2006 End Q2 2006 Number of Symbian smartphone models in the market 106 86 Number of licensees with Symbian smartphones in the market 10 10 Number of Symbian smartphone models in development 49 55 Number of licensees with Symbian smartphones in development 8 8Ecosystem – thank youTo celebrate reaching its 100 millionth smartphone shipment and to kick-start the development of the next 100 million phones, Symbian is launching its first coding competition — Symbian Hundred Million Phones: Because of the Code .Because of the Code is open to all Symbian software developers around the world and involves submitting 100 lines of Symbian C++ code. The competition will run from 16 November to 7 January 2007 and the authors of the top 100 code samples will be awarded the “one-in-100-million” prize, worth over £750 and which includes: a Symbian smartphone, a free Accredited Symbian Developer exam sitting, a Symbian Signed test-run, two Symbian books, an invitation to the Symbian party at 3GSM and a Symbian bag of gifts.Non-developers can also join in the celebration with the Symbian Hundred Million Phones quiz for a chance to win one of three Symbian smartphones. The quiz will be available online from 16 November to 16 December and participants who answer the questions correctly will automatically be entered into the free prize draw.Further details can be found at www.symbian.com/100million.To view the Symbian Q3 2006 webcast presented by Nigel Clifford, please visit http://www.symbian.com/q32006webcast Definitions and Additional Information Royalty Revenue – Symbian receives a royalty on each phone based on Symbian OS shipped by licensees. From Symbian OS v7.0 onwards 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 are being offered an additional pricing model based on either (a) a fraction of the trade price of devices shipping; or (b) an annual volume ratchet pricing structure.Symbian also receives additional royalty revenue for devices shipping with the UIQ software developed by Symbian’s wholly-owned subsidiary, UIQ Technology AB.Royalty Gross Profit – Symbian in-sources certain technologies when either:i) there is already an appropriate industry standard developed by another party orii) 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 receives revenue to cover costs (including full overhead recovery) 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 Centers 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. These activities are designed to promote Symbian OS and are therefore priced to enable cost recovery only. Number of Symbian OS ApplicationsSymbian tracks the number of commercially available Symbian OS applications. This is done through surveying 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 an individual.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.

Harness the power of sun with solar powered cell phone

“Take your old Game Boy Advance SP (we all know you’re not playing with it anymore now that you have a DS Lite), slap on a solar panel and a cellular radio, and you’ve got the latest prototype from NTT DoCoMo. While there are plenty of powerful charging solutions out there for cell phones, they all seem to forget about that huge power source in the sky that we kindly call the sun. This phone doesn’t.It hasn’t got a name yet (to my knowledge), but if you happen to live in the Caribbean, you’ll never have to worry about your mobile phone running out of juice. There’s a big beefy solar panel on the back, and a full-fledged cell phone within. And even if you live in the Arctic, at least you can have unlimited battery six months out of the year.When and if this prototype goes into production remains to be seen.” via mobilemag.com

SE W44S: a multimedia device for KDDI

The Japanese operator KDDI has announced a new mobile phone by Sony Ericsson – the W44S. This is a clamshell with additional free screen area, Nokia N93 and Nokia N92 smartphones have similar form-factor, however the construction is implemented in other way.The phone is tuned for multimedia functionality, including video. The W44S is equipped with a huge 3” 16:9 widescreen LCD. It involves RealityMAX brand technology, which ensures high image resolution.The camera features a 3.2-megapixel resolution, auto focus and image stabilization. Besides the phone supports digital radio service – wideband audio service with CD quality. The sales are expected to start early in December.The main specs of the W44S: CDMA 1X WIN Internal 3” 240×432 pixels LCD External 0.9” 120×27 pixels 16-mm stereo speakers Slot for Memory Stick Duo cards Talk time – 210 minutes Standby time – 270 hours Dimensions – 101x49x24 mm Weight – 146 g” via mobile-review.com