Symbian's Shipments Triple

Reuters reports that shipments of Symbian smartphone software increased nearly three-fold in the 2nd quarter and almost 200 percent for the first half of 2005. Total first-half shipments were 14.5 million, which is already more than all of 2004.

Commenting on Symbian's performance, analyst Richard Windsor at Nomura said, "As far as we can work out, the numbers outside of Nokia and Japan are significantly down on the first quarter. The big issue is what is going to happen in 2006 because it looks like Symbian is running flat at about 2.5 million units a month. So it has reached a stable level and the question is how do we get it to the next stage."