Symbian's press briefing in Barcelona featured the latest round of financial numbers. The headline numbers they want you all to know is that last year there were 51.7m Symbian OS powered phones shipped; a grand total of 110 million devices since Symbian was formed; and 6896 third party applications available (all numbers as of Dec 31 2006). I always find it interesting that Symbian, as a private company, does not have to release these numbers, but they continue to do so. As CEO Nigel Clifford said at the Smartphones Show, it keeps everyone on their toes. And it also helps to remind everyone that Symbian isn't just another commodity on the 'parts required' list in Finland.
They release them because the manufacturers try and hide Symbian away for some reason, and the sheer scale of Symbian sales is the best way of establishing just how important they are, even if consumers are unaware of it.
You always see the sticker of its operating system on a computer, but for some reason on smartphones the operating system is tucked away at the bottom of the tech specs sheet (or not even mentioned in the case of the Nokia 5500 or 6290).
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