Click to View

Symbian rang in the new millennium with the first handset built on its eponymous smartphone platform, the Ericsson R380. Six years later, the company celebrates the 100th model to run on the Symbian operating system (OS). Although the company isn't exactly sure what device enabled it to reach this milestone - three shipped on the same day - CFO Thomas Chambers told a couple of news agency's the likeliest candidate is the Nokia 3250.

The British company's mobile OS is by far the leading smartphone OS in the world. The Diffusion Group found, for example, that last year it enjoyed a market share of 51 percent, followed by Linux (23 percent) and Microsoft's mobile platforms (17 percent). More recently, Canalys announced Symbian's recently hit a new high last quarter, with 69 percent (up from 61.4 percent) market share, followed by Microsoft's mobile platforms with 12 percent.

Over the course of its existence, Symbian says it has shipped its OS on 70.5 million phones. Today, there are 66 Symbian-run devices on the market from 10 licensees with, according to the company, 56 more in development. More than 250 operators offer Symbian-based smartphones.

Symbian shipped 11.6 million more phones last quarter, compared to 6.75 million a year earlier. 11 new Symbian OS smartphones and variants on existing models were released by licensees during the same period.

The Symbian economy is growing as well. 4,735 third party applications for Symbian OS phones are now commercially available, up 25 percent from the 3,804 available by first quarter 2005.

As the smartphone market becomes more competitive, it expected that Symbian's dominance will diminish somewhat. The Diffusion Group even predicts that by the end of 2010, Symbian will fall behind both Microsoft and Linux. Its share declining to approximately 22 percent, with Windows at 29 percent and Linux holding 26 percent.

While expressing some concern about Microsoft, which has growth considerably in the mobile market over the last year couple of years, Symbian's Chambers indicated his company finds it too soon to really worry too much.

"We're always worried about Microsoft. It's huge, and if it wants to get somewhere it will," he said to ZDNet UK. "Windows CE is a force to be recognized, but before we get carried away, I'd expect to see them sign up some more licensees."

The same appeared to hold true about Linux, which he said required much effort to create a phone platform, more - it seemed - than is necessary.

America is the gaping hole in Symbian's smartphone dominance. In the U.S., where it is all about Microsoft, Palm’s Treo and especially RIM’s BlackBerry, smartphones are still thought of more as wireless PDA devices. Whereas in Europe, smartphones are phones first, going back Symbian's founding in the first place, as an alternative to Microsoft's upcoming encroachment to handset maker's turf.

One reason is cellular broadband rolled out much more slowly here, and another is the country's still somewhat PC centric.

Canalys senior analyst Rachel Lashford said to vnunet, "There is much higher PC and broadband penetration in the U.S. so one argument, which is correct to a certain extent, is that people have not seen the need to have voice and data access on the move. I think that is changing now."

Symbian would like to take its dominance in the high-end and extend it to the mid-tier market.

"Clearly we're an order of magnitude beyond our largest competitor," Symbian VP of marketing Simon Garth said to PDAStreet at CTIA Wireless last month. Symbian is using that as the starting point for where they plan to go next. "What we are doing is taking that position to drive into what you would call mid-tier phones," he added

For example, at 3GSM, Symbian announced a 3G phone reference design using Freescale's single core modem targeted to run Nokia's S60 (formally Series 60). The aim is to make these phones more attractive to end-users and industry players.

To further encourage manufacturers, Symbian also cut licensing fees for its operating system in half, from a low of about $5 per handset to $2.50 a phone.

"Symbian is focused on reducing development costs and improving performance for our customers' mid-tier low-cost phones," said the platform developer's VP of product management & strategy Jorgen Behrens at the time. "The results of this collaboration with Freescale, Nokia and Symbian will encourage handset manufacturers to develop more 3G phones and significantly shorten their time to market."

Manufacturers who build Symbian-based handsets add a second interface layer-usually Nokia's S60 interface, but sometimes UIQ-to provide some of their smartphones functionality, look, and feel. So In essence, to use a housing metaphor, Symbian is the foundation, plumbing, and electrical system; the interface is the furnishings and appliances; and the hardware is the frame upon which the smartphone is built.