Symbian chases distant profits

Mobile phone operating system company Symbian has admitted that it could be years away from profitability, even with financial backing from the main mobile handset players.

At this week's 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, Symbian revealed that two million phones equipped with its operating system were shipped during 2002.

But when asked by vnunet.com when the the company expected to make a profit, the company's chief financial officer Thomas Chambers admitted that it would take the shipping of 18 million Symbian-powered handsets per year.

"We make about $5 (£3.10) from each unit licence and about 80 per cent of that is gross profit after costs," Thomas said.

"It may be unusual for a chief financial officer not to be able to tell you when his company will make a profit, but I cannot predict handset sales."

This week Samsung took a five per cent stake in Symbian, joining Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Panasonic and Psion as shareholders and licensees. It is hoped that the backing of Samsung will lead to the sale of many more handsets equipped with Symbian's operating system.

Symbian's chief executive officer, David Levin, said Samsung's move would not tie it to Symbian in any way, and that Samsung's decision to launch the next big smartphone product powered by Microsoft's operating system, also announced in Cannes, was proof of this.

But the prospect of Symbian quickly hitting the 18 million licences a year it needs seems remote.

An insider at one of Symbian's main shareholders said: "The last major operating system deal saw Orange order 200,000 operating system licences for its SPV Internet phone last year, and that went to the competition."