Symbian rings up 100th phone and strong results

A couple of articles on Symbian's results. vnunet.com reports that "Symbian has boasted that a recent contract win brings the number of mobile phones that use its operating system to 100. However, the firm seemed to be at a loss to name which phone reached the magic number."

According to Symbian, the company claims "strong growth in Japan, with 26 of the 100 handsets released being from that market. The company also acknowledged a surge in China now that it had enabled local script on its phones." The U.S. is lagging in terms of Symbian adoption and growth.

Rachel Lashford, at Canalys said, "There is much higher PC and broadband penetration in the US 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."

Lashford added, "When you look at the devices that are popular, they're not really the funky cool devices. It's more about mobile messaging. They're still bought by individuals predominantly, but perhaps used more for corporate applications."

Where exactly does she think the RAZR fits in???

silicon.com writes that Symbian "unveiled its first quarter results, showing year-on-year growth of 73 per cent with more than 11 million devices shipped."

Dr Richard Windsor at Nomura International predicted "figures for the full year could easily top 49 million, more than 10 million more than in 2004. Windsor said, "The problem is that if you take out Japan and you take out Nokia, then no one else is doing hardly anything. That's always been the problem - Symbian seems proprietary to Nokia."

Windsor added, "The [Chinese] market is exploding. It's interesting that there is a burgeoning middle class where the smart phone is aspirational; it's seen as a business tool in the absence of a mobilised laptop."