Symbian Ltd. said its operating results for the first half of 2004 show global shipments of Symbian OS-based phones nearly doubled to 5 million, as compared with the first half of 2003 when 2.7 million units were shipped.
Six months into this year, six Symbian OS licensees were shipping 23 Symbian OS products to operators in Japan and other GSM/GPRS territories worldwide. In all, 34 phones based on the Symbian platform were under development by 10 licensees. Those include GSM/GPRS 2.5G products, W-CDMA 3G phones, regionally segmented products and market segment-targeted devices.
Commercially available third-party applications for Symbian-based phones reached 2,954, compared with 1,323 applications at the end of the first half of 2003.
“Symbian looks forward to further phones based on Symbian OS being announced and commencing shipment during the second half of the year,” said David Levin, chief executive officer of Symbian. “Sales of phones recently announced and to be announced during the second half will largely determine Symbian’s full-year performance.”
Recent studies from market research firm Canalys back up Symbian’s strong results. A new study shows the Symbian platform is gaining market share over the competition, including Microsoft and PalmSource.
For second-quarter 2004, more than 2.4 million Symbian OS phones shipped vs. 1.36 million Microsoft OS phones and 1.34 million PalmSource devices, according to the market research firm.
Symbian therefore garnered 41-percent market share, up from 36.5-percent market share in the same period last year. Microsoft, meanwhile, reached 22.9-percent market share against 22.6 percent last year. PalmSource’s market share fell from 30.9 percent a year ago to 22.5 percent in the second quarter of this year.
Canalys also said that while Symbian dominated the market for voice-centric devices, Microsoft led PalmSource in the data-centric segment and PalmSource beat out Microsoft for the first time in more than a year in the voice-centric space.
