15 February 2006
Symbian OS shipments in Q4 2005 reach 10.9m 2005 shipments total 33.9m
 Symbian Limited, developer and licensor of Symbian OS™, the market-leading operating system for advanced, data-enabled mobile phones today released the following unaudited financial and operational figures for both Q4 2005 and the full year ended 31 December 2005.
Symbian continued to make good progress in Q4 2005, with more than 10.9m phones based on Symbian OS shipping to retailers and to more than 250 major network operators around the world. In 2005 as a whole, Symbian OS licensees shipped 33.9 million phones, taking the total shipments of Symbian OS phones since Symbian’s formation to 58.8 million. Q4 2005 also saw 10 new models launched and we have a further 58 Symbian OS phones in development by nine of our licensees.
In 2005, after four consecutive years of over 100% year on year growth of Symbian OS phone shipments, Symbian has achieved break-even for the first time. This milestone further demonstrates Symbian’s leadership in the rapid growth of the open phone market and commitment to driving new commercial opportunities for handset manufacturers, network operators and partners in the consumer and enterprise space
Highlights – Full year 2005
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2005 full year shipments of phones based on Symbian OS totalled 33.9m (2004 – 14.4m); year on year growth of 136%, the fourth consecutive year in which Symbian OS phone shipments have grown by more than 100%
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During 2005, Symbian’s revenues grew to £114.8m – an increase of 73% on 2004
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Cumulative shipments of Symbian OS phones since Symbian’s formation reached 58.8m phones at the end of December 2005
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At the end of 2005, 60 phone models from 10 Symbian OS licensees were shipping to more than 250 major network operators around the world, of which 36 models commenced shipping in 2005
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Of the 60 phones models shipping, 22 were shipping to network operators in Japan and across Europe for use on W-CDMA (3G) networks. Symbian estimates that 35% of global 3G phone shipments in 2005 were based on Symbian OS
Highlights – Q4 2005
- Global shipments of Symbian OS phones in Q4 2005 rose to 10.9m; year on year growth of 92% (Q4 2004– 5.7m)
Ten new Symbian OS phones models commenced shipping in Q4 2005 including:
For NTT DoCoMo’s 3G FOMA network, the F902i manufactured by Fujitsu, the D902i, D880SS and D701iWM manufactured by Mitsubishi, and the SH902i manufactured by Sharp
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Nokia N70, Nokia 6708, Nokia 9300i
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- At the end of Q4 2005, 58 phones and variants based on Symbian OS were under development by nine licensees (see Notes to Editors for definitions) (end of Q4 2004 – 40 phones and variants under development by 12 licensees)
- Of the 58 phones in development, seven phones have been launched but are not yet commercially available including the Nokia Eseries mobile devices E60, E61 and E71, the Nokia Nseries mobile devices N71, N80 and N92 and Sony Ericsson’s P990 and M600 – all of which are the first phones to be based on Symbian OS v9.
- At the end of Q4 2005, 4,588 third party applications for Symbian OS phones were commercially available (end Q4 2004 – 4,001 applications) (Source: Symbian research, see Notes to Editors for methodology)
- With escalating unit shipments, Symbian has made substantial progress in Q4 2005 to ensure that Symbian OS is the ideal choice for handset manufacturers developing advanced mobile phones for a mass market. On 8 February:
- Symbian announced the first 3G single-core reference design in collaboration with Freescale and S60 aimed at lowering build costs for mid-tier 3G phones and lowering development time by up to 50%
- Symbian announced new alternatives to its software license pricing model in order to encourage customers to accelerate development of Symbian OS phones. The new pricing models are expected to drive higher volumes by enabling licensees to target lower cost phone market segm.
Market
“While shipments of Symbian OS phones continue to increase, the number remains small relative to the size of the overall handset market. Symbian’s strategy remains focused on driving deeper and wider adoption of Symbian OS both for advanced mobile devices and for lower cost, higher volume phones. We have made a number of steps recently, including license price adjustments, a 3G reference design announcement and product developments, which are all supportive of our ambition to address volume markets.
Symbian OS maintains its position as the industry’s leading operating system for phones designed for 3G networks. At the end of Q4 2005, 22 Symbian OS phones (38% of the Symbian OS models shipping) were developed for 3G networks, across Europe and Asia. These include the Nokia 6680, which market researchers IDC recognised in October as the world’s best selling 3G phone.
Symbian’s progress in the Japanese market continues. Since NTT DoCoMo made public its selection of Symbian OS as a common operating system for handsets designed for its 3G FOMA network in November 2004, Symbian OS licensees Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Nokia and Sharp Corporation have announced a total of 22 Symbian OS phones in the Japanese market.
In line with Symbian’s strategy for entering the mass market, on 8th February Symbian announced a new alternatives to its software licence pricing model in order to encourage its licensees to accelerate development of Symbian OS phones. The revised licensing model is expected to drive higher volumes by enabling licensees to target lower cost phone market segments.”
Technology
“Symbian has made substantial progress in Q4 2005 to ensure that Symbian OS is the ideal OS choice for handset manufacturers developing mobile phones for both the advanced and mid-tier markets. In September, Symbian delivered to its licensees the latest release in the Symbian OS v9 family. Symbian continues to deliver incremental enhancements to Symbian OS v9 in line with market requirements such as faster start-up times, improved application performance and smaller memory requirements, many of which specifically address Symbian’s stated aim of targeting the mass market. Other areas of enhancement include development tools for creating Symbian OS variants, which make it faster for handset manufacturers to create operator-specific customisations. Backward compatibility of new versions of Symbian OS with previous versions from v9.0 onwards enables easy migration to new versions for phone vendors, technology providers and 3rd party software providers.
On 8 February 2006 Symbian announced the first single-core 3G reference design, in collaboration with Freescale and S60. This reference design provides a pre-integrated single core chip solution that is expected to provide handset manufacturers and operators the first real opportunity to address the mid tier 3G phone market segments by reducing development time up to 50%.”
Outlook
“Symbian has the leading position in the open phone operating system market, making it is well placed to benefit from the ever wider deployment of 3G networks and from network operators’ push to offer more of their subscribers a broader range of commercial, value-added content and services. Symbian is working hard with licensees and the wider Symbian ecosystem to enable the adoption of Symbian OS into lower cost devices. We look forward to making continued progress in 2006 and beyond.”
About Symbian Limited
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 the first three quarters of 2005, more than 23 million Symbian OS mobile phones were sold worldwide to over 250 network operators, bringing the total number of Symbian OS phones shipped to almost 48million.
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).
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