LONDON—Symbian Ltd., the privately held software firm that offers operating systems for mobile handsets, offered first quarter results showing increasing revenues and unit shipments. The company said 11.7 million devices running its software were shipped in the first quarter, up 73 percent from the nearly 6.8 million shipped in the year-ago quarter. The company’s revenues also increased over the period.
The company attributed the strong demand to robust sales by Nokia Corp., Symbian’s largest shareholder, and by surging demand in Japan for wireless data services. Symbian said one million units are shipped per month in Japan.
Symbian is the leading OS for smart phones in terms of market share, but with smart phone prices high and adoption slow, the firm has placed new focus on high volumes of low-cost handsets. The company said it expects similar growth in the next couple years due to the mass-market approach.
Symbian also reached its 100th handset model to run on its OS, a milestone recently announced by rival Microsoft Corp. for its Windows Mobile OS.
In separate but related news, IDC’s Western European Quarterly Mobile Devices Tracker reported double-digit growth in handset sales in Europe in the first quarter, as shipments reached 40.7 million units, up from 36.8 million in the year-ago quarter. Nokia maintained its market share at 34 percent, while its year-on-year shipments rose 17 percent. Motorola Inc. grew its market share to 18 percent, up from 14 percent in the year-ago quarter—the biggest increase of any of the world’s top five handset vendors—largely on the strength of continued sales of its Razr phone.
