Symbian Ltd. was a

software development Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development inv ...

and licensing consortium company, known for the

Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

(OS), for

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

s and some related devices. Its headquarters were in

Southwark Southwark ( ) is a district of Central London situated on the south bank of the River Thames, forming the north-western part of the wider modern London Borough of Southwark. The district, which is the oldest part of South London, developed ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

, with other offices opened in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge beca ...

, Sweden,

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Count ...

, Japan,

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

, China, South Korea, and Australia. It was established on 24 June 1998 as a partnership between Psion,

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finlan ...

Ericsson (lit. "Telephone Stock Company of LM Ericsson"), commonly known as Ericsson, is a Sweden, Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm. The company sells infrastructure, software, and services in ...

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent public companies, Motorola ...

, and

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

, to exploit the convergence between

personal digital assistant A personal digital assistant (PDA), also known as a handheld PC, is a variety mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. PDAs have been mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of highly capable smartphones, in part ...

s (PDAs) and

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive telephone call, calls over a radio freq ...

s, and a joint-effort to prevent

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

from extending its

desktop computer A desktop computer (often abbreviated desktop) is a personal computer designed for regular use at a single location on or near a desk due to its size and power requirements. The most common configuration has a case that houses the power supply ...

monopoly into the

mobile device A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...

s market. Ten years to the day after it was established, on 24 June 2008, Nokia announced that they intended to acquire the shares that they did not own already, at a cost of €264 million. On the same day the Symbian Foundation was announced, with the aim to "provide royalty-free software and accelerate innovation", and the pledged contribution of the Symbian OS and user interfaces. The acquisition of Symbian Ltd. by Nokia was completed on 2 December 2008, at which point all Symbian employees became Nokia employees. Transfer of relevant Symbian Software Ltd. leases,

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from oth ...

s, and

domain name A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. ...

s from Nokia to the Symbian Foundation was completed in April 2009. On 18 July 2009, Nokia's Symbian professional services department, which was not transferred to the Symbian Foundation, was sold to the

Accenture Accenture plc is an Irish-American professional services company based in Dublin, specializing in information technology (IT) services and consulting. A ''Fortune'' Global 500 company, it reported revenues of $61.6 billion in 2022. Accen ...

consulting A consultant (from la, consultare "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice and other purposeful activities in an area of specialization. Consulting servic ...

company.

Overview

Symbian Ltd. was the brainchild of Psion's next generation mobile

project following the

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calcula ...

version of

EPOC EPOC may be: * Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption * Emotiv EPOC, consumer brain–computer interface devices for PC. * EPOC (operating system), the precursor OS to the Symbian operating system * Efficient Probabilistic Public-Key Encryption ...

. Psion approached the other four companies and decided to work together on a full software suite including

kernel Kernel may refer to: Computing * Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems * Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution * Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming * Kernel method, in machine lea ...

device driver In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabling operating systems and o ...

s, and

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

. Much of Symbian's initial intellectual property came from the software arm of Psion. Symbian Ltd developed and licensed Symbian OS, an operating system for advanced

s and

s (PDAs). Symbian Ltd wanted the system to have different

layers, unlike Microsoft's offerings. Psion originally created several interfaces or "reference designs", which would later end up as Pearl (smartphone), Quartz ( Palm-like PDA), and Crystal (

clamshell design The flip phone or clamshell is a form factor of a mobile phone or other device which is in two or more sections that fold via a hinge. If the hinge is on a long edge the device is more likely to be called clamshell than flip phone (e.g., ...

PDA). One early design called Emerald also ended up in the market on the Ericsson R380.

created the

Series 60 The S60 Platform (formerly Series 60 User Interface) was a software platform for smartphones that runs on top of the Symbian operating system. It was created by Nokia based on the 'Pearl' user interface from Symbian Ltd. It was introduced at ...

(from Pearl), Series 80 and Series 90 platforms (both from Crystal), whilst UIQ Technology, which was a subsidiary of Symbian Ltd. at the time, created UIQ (from Quartz). Another interface was MOAP(S) from NTT Docomo. Despite being partners at Symbian Ltd, the different backers of each interface were effectively competing with each other's software. This became a prominent point in February 2004 when UIQ, which focuses on pen devices, announced its foray in traditional keyboard devices, competing head-on with Nokia's Series 60 offering whilst Nokia was in the process of acquiring Psion's remaining stake in Symbian Ltd. to take overall control of the company.

Shareholding

The company's founder shareholders were Psion, Nokia and

joined the Symbian consortium shortly later, gaining the same 23.1% stake as Nokia and Ericsson in October 1998. Matsushita followed in May 1999 paying £22 million for an 8.8% stake. This was followed by Siemens taking 5% in April 2002 and

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

also taking 5% in February 2003. Motorola sold its stake in the company to Psion and Nokia in September 2003. In February 2004, Psion, the originator of Symbian, intended to sell its 31.1% stake in the company to Nokia. This caused unease amongst other shareholders as Nokia would gain majority control of the company, with Sony Ericsson in particular being a vocal critic. The deal finalised with the stake shared between Nokia, Matsushita, Siemens and Sony Ericsson in July 2004, with Nokia holding a 47.9% share.

Decline

The decline of Symbian Ltd. has been tied to Nokia's fate. By 2007, it enjoyed a high level of success with its operating system running one of every two mobile phones bearing the Nokia logo so that it claimed 65 percent of the mobile market. Its Symbian OS continued to dominate the market until Nokia acquired the company in its entirety in 2008, creating it as an independent non-profit organization called Symbian Foundation. Nokia donated the assets of Symbian Ltd. as well as the Nokia's S60 platform to the new entity with the goal of developing an open-source and royalty-free mobile platform. Nokia, however, began to lose its market share with the emergence of Apple's iPhone and

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

. To address this, Nokia abandoned the Symbian OS in favor of

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design lan ...

OS for its mobile devices, shipping its last Symbian handset in 2013. Having lost its biggest supporter and caretaker, Symbian was absorbed by

, which is supposed to maintain it until 2016. The prior Symbian Foundation has transitioned into a

licensing A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...

entity with no permanent staff, claiming on its website that it is responsible for only specific licensing and legal frameworks put in place during the open sourcing of the platform.

Licensees

Licensees of Symbian's operating system were: Arima, BenQ,

Fujitsu is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the la ...

Lenovo Lenovo Group Limited, often shortened to Lenovo ( , ), is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics, personal computers, software, business solutions, and related se ...

, Matsushita,

, Sharp, Siemens and Sony Mobile.

Key people

Symbian Ltd's CEO at the time of acquisition was Nigel Clifford. Prior CEOs included David Levin, who left in 2005 to head United Business Media, and the founding CEO, Colly Myers, who left the company in 2002 to found IssueBits, the company behind

text messaging Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile devices, desktops/ laptops, or another type of compatible compu ...

Short Message Service (

SMS Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...

) information service Any Question Answered (AQA).

References