Give up: 77.3m Symbian phones shipped in 2007

by Paul Miller, posted Feb 12th 2008 at 9:06AM

Sorry Microsoft and Apple, you may have had some fancy smartphone sales this year in your cute little American way, but globally there's no question who's the real leader in this segment: the Symbian OS shipped on 77.3 million units in 2007. That's a 50% growth over 2006 sales, with over 141 different phone models from eight licensees. If the new hotness from Nokia this year at MWC is any indication, those numbers aren't going to go away very soon, but Sony Ericsson's adoption of Windows Mobile for its flagship XPERIA X1 certainly spells a modicum of trouble for Symbian land.

Filed under: Symbian

Tags: apple, microsoft, nokia, sony ericsson, SonyEricsson, symbian

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

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Troy @ Feb 12th 2008 11:02AM

"but Sony Ericsson's adoption of Windows Mobile for its flagship XPERIA X1 certainly spells a modicum of trouble for Symbian land."
And don't forget about HP's upcoming Ipaq 610 and 910. With SE and HP's faster processors to run WM then all those numbers will start to change. Nokia just adding a kickstand to the N95 and calling it N96 is pretty lame. They're going to have a lot of catching up to do after 2008.

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Richard @ Feb 12th 2008 11:53AM

@Frankie,

What are you smoking?

If you can compare the iPhone to a WinMob phone, certainly you can compare WinMob to Symbian.

The iPhone is, by definition, a feature phone. You can't add applications to it...so it really doesn't-IMHO-make the cut.

There are three flavors of WinMob (Smart, PPC and PPC w/ TouchFlo on top). A fourth is in development (SE's XPERIA panels).

Symbian comes in two flavors (UIQ and Series 60). A third is in development (Series 60 Touch).

It would be interesting to compare S60 to WinMob SmartPhone. I'll bet S60 is the clear leader, globally. PPC vs. UIQ, I'll bet, is a lot closer contest as the P990 did SE no favors in the global share wars and I don't know if the P1 has spurred any kind of share recovery.

I don't think that price makes a difference. It is a straight comparison of phones which run third party apps, be they touch-screen-based or smartphone based.

I can't imagine the Symbian - with years of headstart in Europe (who are years ahead of the USA in going mobile), isn't the overall leader...by a large margin.

...and just so you don't get your undies in a bunch over this, I use a Tilt.

Neutral

amby @ Feb 14th 2008 7:56AM

The 77 million is for the smartphones. Frankie talking about the cheap phones which come with S40 - and those are not included in this count. (I only guess, but Nokia sold about 400 million devices with either S40 or S60 in 2007 - so logic says that S40 $100 dollar devices are not included in this count.)

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PEZ @ Feb 12th 2008 11:58AM

Thats hilarious. Nokia should be saying to themselves... BUY ALL THE COMPANIES YOU WANT!.. we are Symbian. Suck it.

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Fernando @ Feb 12th 2008 12:04PM

See? :)

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Frankie @ Feb 12th 2008 3:12PM

@Richard
Ok, I admit, I posted without researching. Out of curiosity; why a WM device opposed to a Symbian deivce.
For what it's worth; I normally use a Vodafone v1640 (I've yet to see a device compare to the versatility of this one)

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Richard @ Feb 12th 2008 7:19PM

Ah!

WM now because Sony Ericsson doesn't offer a UIQ phone that supports ATT's 3G bandwidths.

That said, I really am fine with my Tilt. I had an 8525 (Hermes) and found that very prone to daily lock-up. But the Tiltis pretty good. Now, if it locks up, I can mostly blame it on something I have added...or tweaked.

SE really design great products. This SE/ HTC marriage was rumoured several months ago. I for one am anxious to get back to an SE designed phone and, I must say, that while they're not the sexiest designed units in the world, the construction of the two HTCs I have had is pretty impressive. So the SE/ HTC marriage should give pretty good products.

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Frankie @ Feb 13th 2008 10:25AM

That title is biased. There are so many different flavors of the Symbian OS, and Windows and Apple (currently) only makes OS for Smart Phones. Some Symbian devices cost $100 dollars while you�d be hard pressed to find a Smart Phone for less than 300. Obviously when you compare apples to apples, or rather Smartphone to Smartphone, you would find that Microsoft is the clear leader.

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