Symbian Limited announced that 100 million Symbian phones have been shipped to over 250 network operators worldwide since Symbian's formation. Symbian is the developer and licenser of the Symbian operating systems for smartphones.

"Hitting the 100 million mark with over 100 different models currently shipping from 10 leading handset vendors is a phenomenal achievement for Symbian and a strong indication that more and more people are embracing the smartphone lifestyle. However, we are still at the beginning of a technology revolution that will change peoples' lives profoundly," said Nigel Clifford, CEO of Symbian.

According to Andy Brown, mobile devices specialist at IDC, a global IT market intelligence company, the cumulative sales of smartphones will reach over 1 billion units by 2011. "The smartphone segment of the handset market is seeing strong annual growth and is expected to rise from 57 million units in 2005 to around 250 million units by the end of 2010. The advent of single chip designs will inevitably attract a growing number of licensees and drive greater penetration into the mid-market," Andy Brown said.

The first Symbian phone, the Ericsson R380, was shipped in 2000. Since then, over 100 million Symbian smartphones have sold around the world including devices manufactured by BenQ, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Sendo, Sharp, Siemens, and Sony Ericsson.