 Symbian Limited, the market leader in open operating systems for mobile phones, has released unaudited financial and operational figures for the first quarter ended 31 March 2008.
Highlights – Q1 2008 as at 31 March 2008
- 206 million cumulative Symbian OS shipments across 235 different phone models since the formation of Symbian
- 18.5 million Symbian mobile phones shipped to consumers worldwide – a 16.5% increase on Q1 2007 (15.9m)
- 92% growth in consulting services from £2.5 million in Q1 2007 to £4.8 million in Q1 2008 driven by a demand for Symbian services resulting from a broader and deeper range of customer mobile phone products in the pipeline
- The world’s five leading handset vendors announced nine products based on Symbian OS v9. The products include UIQ-based Motorola Z10, Sony Ericsson G700 and Sony Ericsson G900 as well as S60-based LG KT610, Nokia N96, Nokia N78, Nokia 6210 Navigator, Nokia 6220 classic and Samsung G810
- 13 Symbian mobile phones commenced shipment in Q1 2008 through over 250 major network operators by 6 licensees - Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Nokia, Samsung, Sharp, and Sony Ericsson - there were 14 models in Q1 2007
- Symbian OS v9.3 is the latest version of Symbian OS to ship. Symbian OS v9.3 is optimized for convergence, with performance and feature enhancements
- 9,282 third-party Symbian applications now commercially available, a 24% increase on 31 March 2007 (7478 applications).
Symbian Limited unaudited Q1 2008 financial highlights
|
Q1 2008 |
Q1 2007 |
YoY change |
| Symbian OS Units |
18.5m |
15.9m |
+16.5% |
| Average Royalty / Unit * |
US$4.1 |
US$4.5 |
|
| Royalty GP% * |
97% |
93% |
|
| Turnover |
|
|
|
| Royalties * |
37.9 |
37.9 |
|
| Consulting Services |
4.8 |
2.5 |
|
| Partnering & Other |
0.8 |
0.9 |
|
| Total |
43.5 |
41.3 |
|
Total Symbian phone models shipping at end Q1 2008
|
End Q1 2008 |
End Q1 2007 |
YoY change |
| Number of Symbian phone models in the market |
154 |
114 |
+35% |
| Number of Symbian phone models in the market
since formation of Symbian |
235 |
168 |
+40% |
| Number of licensees with Symbian phone in the
market |
8 |
8 |
|
| Number of Symbian phone models in development |
70 |
63 |
+11% |
Nigel Clifford, Symbian CEO, commented
“We are pleased to report yet another significant milestone for Symbian. With our customers shipping a total of 18.5 million Symbian mobile phones through over 250 major network operators globally in the quarter, we have now surpassed the 200 million cumulative shipment mark. In fact, by the end of the quarter, a cumulative total of 206 million Symbian mobile phones have been shipped by the world’s leading handset manufacturers and each of our licensees has shipped a new Symbian mobile phone model since the beginning of 2008.
The world’s five leading handset vendors announced nine products based on Symbian OS v9 during Q1 2008 including UIQ-based Motorola Z10, Sony Ericsson G700 and Sony Ericsson G900 as well as S60-based LG KT610, Nokia N96, Nokia N78, Nokia 6210 Navigator, Nokia 6220 classic and Samsung G810. We also experienced an increased demand for consulting services which indicates a broadening and deepening customer phone project pipeline.”
Q1 shipments – a wealth of new models
Eight handset manufacturers launched 13 new Symbian models (multiple variants not included) bringing the total number of models in the market at the end of Q1 2008 to 154 with a total of 235 models shipped since the formation of Symbian. These cover a broad range of market segments and form factors including high-end converged devices, smartphones and mid-range mobile phones. The majority of these new phones are based on Symbian OS v9 including Symbian’s latest product offering, Symbian OS v9.3, which is currently shipping in Japan. At Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona in February, four licensees announced a total of eight new mobile phones based on Symbian OS.
Technology highlights - investing to meet future consumer demands
To stay ahead of consumer and customer demands, Symbian is constantly innovating and adding to its technology portfolio.
At CTIA in Las Vegas in March 2008, we announced Symbian SQL, a robust and highly scalable database management system for Symbian OS. Symbian SQL makes retrieving and sorting terabytes of data and multimedia fast and efficient without compromising performance.
With analysts predicting smartphone shipments to reach approximately 30% of all mobile phone sales by 2013 (ABI Research, March 2008) and with 2007 estimates of around 4 million navigation solutions sales based on GPS-enabled smartphones - the majority of which were based on Symbian OS – we also announced the most advanced mobile OS LBS architecture at CTIA. With this new technology, handset manufacturers do not need to invest separately in developing location support, dramatically reducing the time it takes to create GPS-enabled devices, while developers can cost-effectively target their LBS applications across multiple Symbian OS platforms. Mobile phones featuring Symbian’s LBS offering were recently launched in Japan.
Symbian Outlook – beyond the smartphone space
“Symbian continues to lead the smartphone OS market but is focused on increasing its share of the overall mobile phone market from 7% at the end of 2007” (Source: Strategy Analytics), said Nigel Clifford.
“For the past ten years, helping our customers succeed has been our number one priority. Deploying Symbian OS helps our licensees to differentiate their devices and deliver faster shipment times-to-market across multiple market segments as well as benefiting from Symbian's superiority in platform quality, features and power management.”
“Achieving 200 million devices is testament to the commitment to excellence of Symbian engineers and of our thriving ecosystem of thousands of developers. We’re pleased with our progress and excited about the next wave of mobile innovation.”
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