Smart phone race - Symbian v Symbian, not Microsoft v Symbian?

The threat to mobile operating system company Symbian isn't likely to come from Microsoft over the coming years - it will come from wrangling from the venture's shareholders over just what the OS is for.

That's according to the latest research from Ovum, which also forecasts 100 million Symbian-based smart phones worldwide by 2007 - overshadowing 22 million based on Microsoft's Windows Smartphone OS.

Jessica Figueras, Ovum senior analyst and author of the 'Symbian and the Smartphone Market' report, said: "Contrary to popular belief, the biggest threat currently facing Symbian is not Microsoft. It is the long-running debate over what Symbian is fundamentally for."

The argument is that handset makers will want to produce different devices and standardising on Symbian isn't the same as choosing Microsoft - who tend to be strict about final platforms.

A fragmentation caused by lots of slightly different Symbian devices might well mean application developers, looking to address the largest market, will then be more inclined to write for Windows Smartphone. It's what Ovum calls the 'effort/audience' ratio.

Peter Bancroft, Symbian VP Communications, said: "If you wonder about differentiation, all you have to do is look at [Symbian-based] products already out there. Take a look at DoCoMo's W-CDMA 3G handset, the SonyEricsson P800, the Nokia 9210i Communicator and the [upcoming] N-Gage gaming handset."

His argument is that Symbian is flexible for all sorts of mobile devices. The downside of that is that even slight differences - not seen when contract manufacturers typically make a Windows Smartphone handset - make life harder for developers.

Ovum's Figueras added: "It's really hard to over-estimate the importance of Nokia on all this."

Nokia, and its Series 60 interface that sits on top of the Symbian OS, should allow a wide array of software to work on Symbian/Nokia phones, which is good news for Symbian, Figueras reckons.

However, over the past year there has been some concern Symbian is too much under Nokia's spell. The Finnish company, according to the latest figures from Gartner, out yesterday, is still by far the market leader, taking 35 per cent of a 112.7 million phone market during the first quarter. But pinning its future on one vendor may prove risky.

At the same time, shareholder Motorola is working with the Linux OS - with an eye on the Chinese market where the company is a powerhouse already - and has even implied Microsoft will form part of its future plans.

In between these two extremes Symbian's other shareholders are Ericsson, Matsushita, Psion, Samsung and Siemens.

In related news, Microsoft yesterday announced Australia's Optus as the latest operator to offer a device based on its Windows Smartphone OS. The move follows a similar unveiling last week with TeliaSonera in Scandinavia.