Symbian sales soar

LONDON (Reuters) - British mobile software company Symbian, 47.9 percent owned by Nokia, said third quarter shipments rose 56 percent year-on-year to 20.4 million, while revenues soared 30 percent.

Symbian said in a statement on Tuesday it generated sales of 52.4 million pounds ($109.1 million) in the three months to end September, up from 40.3 million in the same period last year.

"Symbian continues to lead the global smartphone market in Q3 2007 ... Licensees are using Symbian as their preferred operating system for the next generation of converged mobile devices," Chief Executive Nigel Clifford said in a statement.

He declined to comment further.

Richard Windsor, analyst at Nomura, said in a note the shipment figures were slightly below his expectations -- a shortfall he said was likely to have come from Japan.

"We estimate that 3.3 million units were shipped in Japan compared to our expectation of 4.5 million units ... The volatility of the Japanese market is representative of the relatively small size of the market," he said in a note.

He added that outlook was vague but said Symbian clearly expected to continue its dominance of the smartphone space.

Symbian produces the operating and application software for advanced mobile phones, known as smartphones.

It supplies software to Nokia's S60 phone as well as UIQ -- a joint venture between Sony Ericsson and Motorola.

Rivals include Microsoft's Windows Mobile and potentially Google, which launched its long-awaited push into the mobile phone market on Monday.

(Reporting By John Bowker, editing by Mike Elliott)