Symbian Ltd.
| Symbian Ltd.
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|---|---|
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| legal form | Ltd. |
| founding | 1998 |
| resolution | 2008 |
| Seat | Southwark , UK |
| management | Colly Myers, David Levin, Nigel Clifford |
| Number of employees | 1178 (2007) |
| sales | € 50.710 billion (2008) |
The Symbian Limited was an English software company with headquarters in London , which as a foundation under the name since 2008 Symbian Foundation continues to exist.
Symbian Ltd. [ ˈSɪmbɪən ] was founded in June 1998 as a consortium of Ericsson , Motorola , Nokia and Psion . In the following years Panasonic , Siemens , Sony Ericsson and Samsung also joined as shareholders. In December 2008 Nokia took over all shares in Symbian. As early as June 2008, Nokia announced that it would then give Symbian to a newly established Symbian Foundation .
Symbian OS operating system
The company develops and sells the Symbian OS operating system , which is based on EPOC and operates smartphones from manufacturers and licensees BenQ , Ericsson, Fujitsu , LG , Mitsubishi , Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic , Samsung , Sendo , Sharp , Siemens and Sony Ericsson. As of April 2006, no fewer than 100 different smartphone models with Symbian OS have been delivered to over 250 major network operators worldwide. A total of 145 million Symbian smartphones have been delivered since the Ericsson R380 in 2000 (as of Q2 2007).
Various user interfaces are based on Symbian OS: Most devices come from Nokia and are equipped with the S60 (formerly Series 60) user interface . The best known devices are currently in the Nokia Nseries (N70 - N73, N76, N78, N79, N80 - N82, N90 - N93, N95, N96, N97 etc.) and Eseries (E50, E51, E60, E61 (i), E65, E66, E70, E71, E90 Communicator etc.), but other manufacturers such as Samsung also use the S60 in some devices. In addition, Nokia still used Series 80 in the Communicator series and Series 90 (in the Nokia 7710 widescreen smartphone) - but both were replaced by the S60 3rd Edition. With the S60 5th Edition, Nokia and Samsung are now using a touch screen variant in some devices that can be operated with both a stylus and fingers.
Another well-known user interface is UIQ , which is used by various manufacturers. Sony Ericsson uses UIQ in the P series (P800, P900, P1i etc.), in the G series (G700, G900) in the M series (M600i) and in the W series (W950i, W960i). After the A900 / A1000 series, Motorola comes onto the market with the RIZR Z8 based on UIQ 3.0.
In addition, Symbian OS is also used in closed phones for the Japanese market ( FOMA phones).
Since the takeover of Symbian Ltd. Nokia makes Symbian components available under the Eclipse license ( open source ). This is intended to achieve a certain independence of the software applications from the respective user interface in addition to a higher distribution. Above all, the aim is to develop market power over Windows Mobile , Linux mobile ( Android , LiMo , Openmoko ) and iOS (iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad).
software
For Symbian OS there are well over 8,000 applications (e-books, Office, games, tools, dictionaries, etc.) independent of several thousand software developers ( Independent Software Vendor ) worldwide.