As noted in yesterday's report Symbian had flagged a "customer" announcement for the second day of the show, but the scale and significant took most be surprise. It was also interesting in that it suggested some degree of co-operation between the licensees; as such an announcement would clearly have overwhelmed the P990's introduction, if they had both occurred on the first day.

These three new phones signals that Nokia considers itself a serious enterprise player. There should not really be any question over this given the success of the current Series 80 devices. They have now shipped over a million units since launch and are still rolling out into new markets (arriving with Cingular in the US next month, for example).

The device likely to get the most column inches in undoubtedly the E61. While it is something of a me-too design, resembling the form factor popularized by RIM and the Palm Treo, Nokia believe it advances the design style by adding "true smartphone capabilities". The E70 is an update on Nokia's unique fold out keyboard design and the only device in this range to support a camera. While the E60 is effectively an answer to enterprise issues with the presence of a camera in a smartphone.

From a brief preview of the devices, Nokia seemed to have only one of each at the show, they are impressive. While clearly designed as a business-to-business sales proposition they will also create significant interest from prosumers, even though these users may not be able to benefit from all of the device capabilities, such as integration with IP PBX and the enterprise push email offerings.

The announcement also continues Nokia's rebranding exercise, that started with the N series. Nokia obviously believes there is a need to differentiate its offering and highlight market segment in the device brand. This move underlines a comment made yesterday by Nigel Clifford that mobile phones are both converging and diverging. Convergence in the capabilities of small consumer electronics devices, music player, camera, phone etc. onto the phone, while at the same time diverging into segmented markets for exactly the same features, and more. Given this fact the need to differentiate offerings is clear, something already seen in initiatives such as Sony Ericsson's Walkman phones.

The one note of caution that needs to be sounded is that these devices do not immediately address the US market. Here there seems to be something of a catch-22, there are no devices with US specifications because there is no operator demand, but where would the demand be without US specification devices? Nokia points out that US variants are not a significant design challenge, a common theme, as the same was said by Sony Ericsson regarding the P990; when there is customer (operator) demand there will be US variants. All the same a lack of US support from the start is disappointing and continues to highlight one of Symbian's major hurdles, US penetration.

However in deference to the features and design of these three phones they are not really the most impressive aspect of this announcement. The real news is the flexibility and time to market that Symbian OS is now achieving. The platform approach, in Symbian OS, in Series 60 and in the hardware, is showing its strength in allowing Nokia to offer three radically different designs concurrently. While Nokia is currently the only licensee achieving this, moving into 2006 it is likely that the same will be achieved by Symbian's other licensees.

With this announcement it is almost hard to remember that the day started with a hands on look at the P990. While Sony Ericsson were describing the demonstration device as "missing a few lines of code" it seemed pretty stable and complete. The screen is physically shorter than on the current P series devices, which in part is to accommodate the extra horizontal pixels; now a fully QVGA screen is being used. Accommodating a full keyboard on the device is another reason for this change. Moving the keyboard onto the device was itself driven by a desire to provide a backlight, so typing was practical in low light conditions. The camera was also very impressive. Here Sony Ericsson have continues the design style used in some of its feature phones. When the P990 is used as a camera it is held horizontally and looks and feels like a digital camera. The camera also show the attention to detail in the P990's design, as the camera lens has a rotating cover that activates the camera application when it is opened.

One of the P990 standard features is QuickOffice. This application is becoming the de-facto office suite for Symbian OS, following the announcement of licensing to Series 60. One of the obvious issues with applications, like QuickOffice, being burnt into device ROM is that it limits the user to the application capabilities shipped with the phone. QuickOffice are overcoming part of this limitation in its new "3" product, with the introduction of a plug-in architecture. This will allow additional features to be added to the suite after a device has been purchased.

Rivaling QuickOffice is DataViz's Documents To Go suite. DataViz may seem to have a significant disadvantage over QuickOffice, but sees its suit as part of a integrated offering with RoadSync. DataViz probably have a good point here. Their always on email client is likely to be very popular and significantly represents the first implementation of any mail client that works with Microsoft's Exchange push service patch.

The technology from QuickOffice and DataViz is highly significant as it erodes any differentiation that Microsoft's mobile platform has for enterprise usage.

One lasting impressing of the Smartphone Show is that Symbian OS has something to offer everyone in the mobile industry; from the silicon vendors and handset manufacturers through media suppliers and enterprise solutions vendors, to small software developers. DreamSpring is one of these small developers and a first time exhibitor, who came in from Australia. Talking to Malcolm Lithgow the company gained an exposure at the show that would not have been possible by any other means. Their product, DreamConnect a contacts application enhancement, gained interest from Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia. While the true benefit of attendance will only be measurable in the months or years to come, the show exceeded Malcolm's expectations.

Overall the Smartphone Show exuded an air of quiet confidence, a feeling that the future for Symbian OS and the players in the ecosystem is bright, while recognizing that the game is not over in determining what technology will dominate the mobile space. These two show reports have really just scratched the surface in terms of what the show was about and what it achieved. Almost everyone we spoke to at the end of the show was tired but satisfied and blocking out their diary for October next year.

Look out for another show report on Monday and do not forget to check out the full list of show announcements on our show page, as well as the photo blog.