Symbian smart phone shipments triple

Smart phone OS firm Symbian has seen shipments of handsets bearing its operating system triple over the last year.

The second quarter of this year saw 7.8 million handsets shipped with the Symbian operating system, up from 2.4 million in Q2 2004.

The first half of this year saw a total of 14.5 million handsets shipped, an increase of 191 per cent on the corresponding period of 2004.

The vendor is also seeing an increase in licensees, with seven handsets firms using its technology, and more 3G phones being developed on the OS - of the 54 Symbian-based handsets, 16 are now designed for W-CDMA.

However, Symbian's CEO, Nigel Clifford, reiterated that there remains work for the company to do to reach mass market penetration.

"Although we are delighted by Symbian's H1 performance, shipments of Symbian OS phones remain small relative to the overall handset market.

"Symbian's strategic focus must remain on driving increased shipments through the adoption of Symbian OS for further handset models, and particularly for the development of lower price, mid-range handsets designed to ship in higher volumes," he said in a statement.