Symbian recently announced the latest version of its operating system for mobile phones.

Building on the success of its predecessors, Symbian OS v9.3 adds new enhancements to improve phone performance while at the same time reducing time-to-market for handset vendors and network operators. Fully backwards compatible with previous versions in the v9 family, the new OS enables shorter start-up times for phones and key applications; improved memory management; reduced development and ownership cost (and time to market); new development tools; and awareness for the Eclipse/CDT IDE framework and Nokia’s (News - Alert) Carbide.c++.

“As the smartphone category broadens into different market segments and quickly expands across global regions, Symbian continues to focus on delivering a flexible and robust open mobile operating system,” said Jorgen Behrens, Symbian’s vice president of product management and strategy, in a press release. “Symbian OS v9.3 will allow handset manufacturers and network operators to get the best and most differentiated phones to market faster, with lower costs and more easily. Approximately 35 million Symbian smartphones shipped in 2005. By providing enhanced market leading provisioning with Symbian OS v9.3 and a consumer market trend leaning towards convergence, we expect smartphone shipment numbers to increase rapidly.”

John Jackson, director of wireless/mobile technologies for Yankee Group, pointed out that by 2010, “well over 200 million smartphones will be selling worldwide each year, representing 18 percent of annual global volumes.”

“As smartphones’ functionality becomes pervasive, the handset market will be able to meet segment-specific demands rapidly, and at low cost,” Jackson said. “The burgeoning service environment around 3G networks in many major markets places increasing demands on handset requirements. A robust, scalable OS and associated enabling software is crucial to vendors’ product roadmaps, and operators' ability to deploy differentiated services. Symbian OS enables significant market requirements in phone performance and hardware capabilities that allow handset manufacturers to bring more attractive differentiated phones to market more quickly.”

Symbian also announced recently that NTT DoCoMo has selected the Symbian OS for its FOMA SH702iS mobile phone.

The phone, which hit the market on July 21, is manufactured by Sharp, a Symbian OS licensee.

This brings the total number of Symbian OS-based mobile phones shipped in Japan to 36.

The news follows Symbian’s announcement on July 12 that more than 10 million Symbian-OS-based smartphones have shipped in Japan to date.

According to the company, the very first Symbian OS phones shipped in Japan in 2003 from Fujitsu (the FOMA F2051, followed by the FOMA F2102). A total of six Symbian OS based models had been shipped in Japan from Fujitsu and Nokia in 2004; and 14 models from Fujitsu, Nokia, Mitsubishi, Sharp, and Motorola (News - Alert) shipped in 2005.

“This significant achievement was driven by the remarkable growth of the advanced 3G mobile phone market in Japan, NTT DoCoMo’s selection of Symbian OS as a common software development platform for its 3G FOMA network and the fact that Symbian OS, as an open mobile operating system, reduces time to market,” said Symbian President Haruhiko Hisa in a press release. “Symbian will continue to focus on enabling applications and services that meet the demands of mobile phone users by working together with network operators, handset manufacturers, and partners in Japan.”

For more information about Symbian, visit http://www.symbian.com/.

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Patrick Barnard is Associate Editor for TMCnet and a columnist covering the telecom industry. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.