Published by Rafe Blandford at 9:14 UTC, May 20th 2008
Symbian today publish its first set of 2008 results, which showed shipments of 18.5 million devices in Q1, a year on year increase of 16.5%, a figure which suggests a flattening of device shipments. This takes total Symbian OS device shipments to 206 million. There was also a 92% growth in consultancy service revenue to £4.8 million driven demand for services from 'a broader and deeper range of customer mobile phone products in the pipeline'.
The growth rate of shipments of Symbian OS devices year on year has slowed for Q1 (16.8% for Q1 2008, compared to 53% for Q4 2007). Symbian's growth percentage is lower (16.8%) than the industry as a whole (50%). This is also the first quarter, in recent Symbian history, where the shipments have not exceeded the previous quarters figures.
A slow down in growth rates compared to competitors and the industry as a whole is almost inevitable give Symbian's dominant position and the increasing competition in the software platform space, and these figures do come of the back of strong Q1 2007 results. However the flattening in shipment numbers may me more of an issue, although realistically it too early to call any trends.
Also noteworthy is that there 235 Symbian OS devices have shipped since the formation of Symbian (up 40% year-on-year from 168), partly reflecting the push into the mid tier. There are currently 70 Symbian OS devices in development (up 11% year-on-year from 60) which is particularly positive given Mitsubishi withdrawal from the phone market in March.
Comments by Nigel Clifford, Symbian's CEO:
“Symbian continues to lead the smartphone OS market but is focused on increasing its share of the overall mobile phone market from 7% at the end of 2007” (Source: Strategy Analytics)
“For the past ten years, helping our customers succeed has been our number one priority. Deploying Symbian OS helps our licensees to differentiate their devices and deliver faster shipment times-to-market across multiple market segments as well as benefiting from Symbian's superiority in platform quality, features and power management.”
“Achieving 200 million devices is testament to the commitment to excellence of Symbian engineers and of our thriving ecosystem of thousands of developers. We’re pleased with our progress and excited about the next wave of mobile innovation.”
The full results are available on the Symbian website.
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Categories: Links of Interest, Industry
Platforms: General, S60 3rd Edition, UIQ 3, MOAP
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