The summary highlights are as follows:
- 15.9m Symbian smartphones shipped by licensees in Q1 2007, a 35.9% increase on Q1 2006 (Q1 2006 - 11.7m). 126 million cumulative Symbian smartphone unit shipments, as of 31 March 2007. 20 million cumulative Symbian smartphone unit shipments milestone reached in Japan since first 3G Symbian model shipped in 2003. All models shipped since have been 3G.
- 14 new Symbian smartphone models commenced shipment in Q1 2007: 12 models were 3G enabled and eight models were for the Japanese market, launched in diverse segments including business, mobile TV, music, fashion, sport.
- New Symbian smartphone models which were announced in Q1 2007 but were not shipping as of 31 March 2007 include the MOTORIZR Z8, the Nokia 5700 XpressMusic, the Nokia 6110 Navigator, and Eseries devices for the enterprise: the Nokia E90 and the Nokia E61i. Those already shipping include the Nokia N93i, Nokia N76, and Nokia E65.
- Symbian announced the latest evolution of its product, Symbian OS v9.5 , which brings high performance features designed for richer consumer and enterprise experiences as well as significant savings to phone build costs and time-to-market.
- At 3GSM in February 2007, Telefónica Móviles España, T-Mobile and Telecom Italia announced their choice of a platform based on Symbian OS . They join Vodafone, Orange and NTT DoCoMo in sharing the benefits of reduced time-to-market for new service delivery, scalability, and cost reduction.
- 7,478 third party Symbian applications are commercially available, as of 31 March 2007, up 58% (Q1 2006 - 4,735 applications).
- The sale to Sony Ericsson of UIQ Technology AB and intellectual property rights in the UIQ user interface were completed.
In the press release there's an Executive Summary from Nigel Clifford that is well worth reading.
In the Symbian Outlook section of the summary Clifford comments that:
"We are seeing two significant areas of new smartphone growth in addition to the established multimedia and enterprise markets: emerging economies and mass market segments. Both have stringent requirements for security, high performance, extended differentiation, long battery life, and low cost. Through deep collaboration with Symbian OS licensees, support of a thriving ecosystem and development of market-leading multimedia, graphics and connectivity solutions, Symbian is driving the market, enabling even richer experiences at lower cost.
We look forward to continued growth in adoption of Symbian OS through 2007. We will see a continuation of innovative devices across a range of segments from the world's leading handset vendors, who have all launched or are developing phones on Symbian OS v9."
This sums up the story for Symbian for 2007 and beyond. While it will continue to innovate and invest at the high end there is a major focus on expanding the accessible market for Symbian OS. By driving down costs Symbian can bring its software to further segments increasing both the overall numbers but also increasing the impact of advantages gained by using a platform.