What's nice to see from a cashflow point of view is that while the value of the Symbian licence per phone has dropped from $5.60 last year to $5.20 per phone, the costs have been reduced as well. 88% of the licence fee is gross profit now, as opposed to 82%. That's a healthy trend, and as devices move into the mid-level market, it's going to improve even more.
It's not all perfect - even with 11 licencees of Symbian OS, the majority of licencing revenue is coming from just one licencee, Nokia. Sony Ericsson are expected to make a much stronger showing over the next few months with their targeted music and messaging UIQ phones, but if anyone was to invest in Symbian, they'd probably want the other partners to be making up a higher percentage of the income than they are just now.
Given that Symbian's investors though are (in the most part) the licensees, it's not something critical, but it's about the only wrinkle in an otherwise healthy quarterly report. And who could not enjoy the most carefully constructed quote possible: "According to Canalys, Symbian is the leading open OS shipping in China at 62% market share of the smartphone market in Q1"
11.70m Symbian OS shipments in Q1 2006
Total cumulative shipments reach 70.5m
LONDON, United Kingdom – 16 May 2006 - Symbian Limited, developer and licensor of Symbian OS™ the market-leading open operating system for data-enabled mobile phones also known as smartphones, today released the following unaudited financial and operational figures for the quarter ended 31 March 2006:
Q1 2006 Highlights
- Global shipments of Symbian OS phones during Q1 2006 rose to 11.70m; year on year quarter growth of 73% (Q1 2005 – 6.75m)
- Cumulative shipments of Symbian OS phones since Symbian’s formation reached 70.5 million phones
- 10 licensees are currently shipping 66 different Symbian OS phone models to more than 250 major network operators worldwide (Q1 2005 48 phones from 9 licensees)
- Q1 2006 Symbian’s revenues grew to £38.8m – an increase of 56% on Q1 2005
- 56 Symbian OS phone models are under development by 9 licensees (Q1 2005, 41 phones & variants and 11 licensees) (see Notes to Editors for definitions)
- 11 new Symbian OS phone models and variants commenced shipping in Q1 from 6 licensees which included (see Notes to Editors for definitions):
- Fujitsu’s FOMA™ F702iD for NTT DoCoMo’s FOMA 3G network with NTT DoCoMo’s MOAP user interface
- Mitsubishi’s FOMA D702i for NTT DoCoMo’s FOMA 3G network with NTT DoCoMo’s MOAP user interface
- Nokia 9300 Chinese variant, Nokia 9300i European variant, Nokia 9300 EDGE U.S. variant, with the Nokia Series 80 software
- Nokia's FOMA™ NM850iG (Nokia 6630 Japanese variant) for NTT DoCoMo’s FOMA 3G network with NTT DoCoMo’s MOAP user interface
- Nokia 3250 with S60 software
- Nokia N90 for EDGE with S60 software
- Samsung D728 GSM Chinese variant with S60 software
- Sharp’s FOMA SH702iD for NTT DoCoMo’s FOMA 3G network with NTT DoCoMo’s MOAP user interface
- Sony Ericsson’s FOMA SO902i for NTT DoCoMo’s FOMA 3G network with NTT DoCoMo’s MOAP user interface
- During Q1 2006, the 100th phone model (see notes for definitions) based on Symbian OS commenced shipping
- 27 of the 66 (41%) Symbian OS phones shipping during Q1 2006 are designed for 3G W-CDMA networks
- 4,735 third party applications for Symbian OS phones are now commercially available, up 25% (Q1 2005 – 3,804 applications) (Source: Symbian research; see Notes to Editors for methodology)
Chief Executive Commentary
Nigel Clifford, Chief Executive Officer, Symbian Ltd today said:
Operational Review
“Symbian continued to make good progress in Q1 2006, with 11.70 million phones based on Symbian OS shipping to retailers and to more than 250 network operators around the world. This takes the total shipments of Symbian OS phones since Symbian’s formation to 70.5 million.
At the end of Q1, 56 Symbian OS phones were in development by 9 Symbian OS licensees and, during Q1, 11 new models and variants commenced shipping. I am especially pleased to announce that the 100th phone model based on Symbian OS shipped in Q1. This milestone, coupled with the total number of phones shipped since Symbian’s formation, further demonstrates Symbian’s leadership in the rapid growth of the open OS phone market and underlines the commercial opportunities for Symbian OS ecosystem partners, including handset manufacturers, network operators, developers and partners in the consumer and enterprise space.
Shipments of Symbian OS phones are increasing at a healthy rate as Symbian OS continues to be adopted for the higher-end phone segments and is used increasingly for lower cost, higher volume phones. To accelerate wider portfolio use, in February 2006, we announced additional Symbian OS licence pricing options, a 3G reference design and product developments. These initiatives support our ambition to address volume markets by reducing Symbian OS phone costs and licensee handset time-to-market significantly.”
Market
“As the smartphone and mid range phone markets expand across the regions, Symbian continues to offer choice and differentiation to the market. This includes supporting multiple user interface options to respond to network operator and diverse regional market requirements, such as language and user-style preferences, including NTT DoCoMo’s Symbian OS-based MOAP for its FOMA networks, S60, Series 80 and UIQ.
Examples of the flexibility available from Symbian OS include NTT DoCoMo’s use of Symbian OS for the Raku Raku II aimed at the elderly in Japan; Nokia’s Series 80 ease of use and installation of
BlackBerry Connect™ on the Nokia 9300 available with Cingular in the US; And Sony Ericsson’s choice of UIQ 3.0 for the announced 3G-based P990, M600 and the W950 Walkman phones and FOMA’s MOAP for the SO902i.
As the mobile phone market develops rapidly new opportunities are apparent, particularly in Asia, where the market for our devices in, for example, Japan and China is growing strongly. According to Canalys who reported on global smartphone shipments for Q1 2006 (Canalys Q1 2006 Global Smart Mobile Device Research), Symbian OS phone shipments in Asia Pacific continued to grow strongly, surpassing shipments for EMEA for the first time.
- Six Symbian OS licensees have announced a total of 28 Symbian OS phones in the Japanese market to date. With Q1 phone shipments tripling from Q1 last year, Japan is the fastest growing market for Symbian OS phones.
- Symbian’s licensees continue to ship significant volumes in China, the fastest growing market for mobile phones in the world. According to Canalys, Symbian is the leading open OS shipping in China at 62% market share of the smartphone market in Q1."
Technology
“In Q1 2006 Symbian continued to enhance Symbian OS for its licensees including the latest available Symbian OS v9.2. Symbian consistently delivers incremental advances to the Symbian OS v9 family in line with market requirements, many of which specifically address Symbian’s aim of targeting higher-volume, lower-cost phones. Enhancements include WiFi support as well as other new hardware capabilities plus improved support for UMA and other IP-based services being rolled out by the major network operators.
On 8th of February 2006 Symbian announced the first single-core 3G reference design, in collaboration with Freescale and Nokia’s S60. This reference design provides a pre-integrated single 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 substantially reducing development time.
During Q1, we inaugurated our wholly owned subsidiary in Bangalore, India, including our new engineering facilities to support Symbian's growing software development and engineering teams based in Bangalore. This software engineering team adds to the flexibility and strengths of Symbian’s global software development activity and focuses on core Symbian OS technologies, application technologies and product engineering.”
Outlook
“Symbian is the leading vendor in the open phone operating system market. Through innovating with our licensees we are supporting network operators to offer their subscribers a broader range of commercial, value-added content and services such as TV, push email, and web based news and entertainment services. For example at 3GSM in February, Vodafone and Nokia announced their intention to strengthen the role of S60 software on top of Symbian OS in Vodafone's device portfolio. This collaboration will help Vodafone to offer new services more quickly to its customers.
In summary, Symbian continues to work closely with licensees, user interface providers and the wider Symbian ecosystem worldwide to sustain and extend the adoption of Symbian OS into more market segments, including those with lower cost devices. We are pleased with our progress so far in 2006 and look forward continued success in 2006 and beyond.”
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