LONDON-Symbian Ltd., which designs operating systems for smart phones, said its Symbian OS unit shipments grew in the first half of the year to 2.68 million from 230,000 in the same period last year. Its royalty revenue increased to $16.2 million in the period from $2.4 million in the same half last year.
The company said the Nokia 7650 and 3650 and the Sony Ericsson P800 now include its OS. In addition, the F2102V by Fujitsu for NTT DoCoMo’s W-CDMA network is available in Japan.
At the end of the first half, 26 phones and variants based on Symbian OS were under development by nine licensees, including the Nokia N-Gage gaming device, Siemens SX-1 and Samsung SGH-D700. Also, 10 Symbian OS-based phones and variants from three licensees are currently shipping around the world.
“This growth in sales of Symbian OS-based smart phones is encouraging although these sales are modest in relation to overall phones sales,” said David Levin, the company’s chief executive officer.
The U.K.-based company’s total revenues were $33.4 million in the first half, up from $15 million in the first half of last year.
Symbian is a joint venture owned by Psion, L.M. Ericsson, Nokia Corp., Panasonic, Motorola Inc., Samsung and Siemens AG. Although it is a private company, Symbian is targeting an initial public offering once market conditions improve and its product shipments increase further.
