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WirelessDevNet.com Press Release
Symbian Announces New Pricing Models to Accelerate Mass Market Adoption of Symbian OS
London, UK – 8 February 2006 - Symbian Limited today announced new alternative software license pricing models designed to enable customers – the world’s leading handset manufacturers - to target lower cost device market segments and drive higher volumes of Symbian OS™ phones.
With strong growth in unit shipments at over 100 per cent annually for four consecutive years, Symbian is now introducing new scaleable pricing options to its current pricing model. Its objective is to reduce the cost of using Symbian OS and further accelerate the uptake of Symbian OS in high volume segments. The current pricing model is $7.25 per unit for the first two million handsets sold with each major release of Symbian OS and $5 for every handset thereafter. Under the new pricing alternatives, Symbian OS royalties as low as $2.50 per unit are possible. Upon adoption of the new pricing, licensees are not required to pay higher royalties for the first 2 million units of a Symbian OS release, therefore these new pricing alternatives remove the barriers for licensees to migrate to the latest version of Symbian OS.
With the introduction of the new models, Symbian OS customers will have the option to adopt, on an annual basis, one of two additional pricing alternatives that are based on either i) a fraction of the trade price of devices shipping or ii) scaleable pricing that reduces as the licensee’s total volume of shipments increase within a one year period. The new pricing options are available to Symbian OS v9 shipments from July 2006 onwards. As with the existing pricing, these new pricing alternatives are made available to all Symbian OS customers equally.
Nigel Clifford, CEO, Symbian said “Symbian is focused on driving down the costs to our customers of developing and building Symbian OS phones while constantly enhancing the phones’ performance. I am confident that our new pricing models will prove to be appealing to handset manufacturers and my initial discussions with our customers and partners is very positive. By supporting our customers with flexible pricing options, we can target a much wider and deeper market and drive Symbian OS into the high volume phone segments.”
Thomas Chambers, CFO, Symbian said: “Symbian and its shareholders have agreed new pricing models to ensure the long-term success of Symbian OS as the industry’s leading technology software from which to deliver mass market smartphones for 2.5 and 3G networks. Scaleable pricing alternatives that support and encourage mid tier phones reflects a natural evolution of Symbian’s product lifecycle aiming to penetrate the wider market by getting into more phones. “
The smartphone is fast becoming the world’s most advanced volume consumer electronic device and, like all consumer electronic devices, the cost of manufacturing a smartphone has consistently decreased while its functionality has continued to grow. To drive costs down further, Symbian today also announced in collaboration with Freescale and Nokia the first Symbian OS 3G mobile phone reference design for S60 using a single core 3G chip. This reference design will enable handset manufacturers and network operators to roll-out increased volumes of Symbian OS phones to the mid tier 3G market segment more cost effectively and reduce product development time up to 50 per cent.
Nigel Clifford will be presenting more information on Symbian’s pricing models, Symbian’s Q4 and full 2005 financial results, and a series of Symbian initiatives focused on Symbian’s mass market strategy at 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona on February 14th at 14.00 CET in the Media Zone, in Hall 2 Level 0, Fira de Barcelona. For press enquiries please email press@symbian.com or visit Symbian at 3GSM World Congress, Stand No: B20 and Hospitality suite AV91 / AV92.
About Symbian Limited
Symbian is a software licensing company that develops and licenses Symbian OS, the market leading open operating system for advanced, data-enabled mobile phones also known as smartphones.
Symbian licenses Symbian OS to the world’s leading handset manufacturers and has built close co-operative business relationships with leading companies across the mobile industry. In the first three quarters of 2005, more than 23 million Symbian OS mobile phones were sold worldwide to over 250 network operators, bringing the total number of Symbian OS phones shipped to almost 48million.
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