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.
Highlights – Full
year 2005
- 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%
- During 2005, Symbian’s revenues grew
to £114.8m – an increase of 73% on 2004
- Cumulative shipments of Symbian OS
phones since Symbian’s formation reached 58.8m phones at the end of
December 2005
- 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
- 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
- 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 segments
Chief Executive
Commentary
Nigel
Clifford, Chief Executive Officer, Symbian Ltd today said:
Operational Review
“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.”
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.”
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