UK-based Symbian said shipments of its smartphone software nearly tripled in the second quarter of 2005. Symbian said its operating system was installed in 7.8 million phones compared with 2.6 million a year ago.

Symbian added that more phones with its operating system were shipped in the first half of 2005 than in the whole of 2004. This spike led to a near-doubling in company revenue. For the first half of the year, revenue was $93 million. "As in previous years, Symbian's full year performance will be significantly influenced by new Symbian OS (operating system) products launched during the second half of the year," Symbian said in an official statement.

Symbian now claims a 50 percent share of the market for smartphones, competing in this market with PalmSource OS and Microsoft Mobile Windows.  However, Symbian CEO Nigel Clifford did note that the company's smartphone software shipments still represent only a small part of the overall mobile phone market.

He said the company needs to start to focus more on the lower and middle ranges of the market, noting, "The big issue is what is going to happen in 2006 because it looks like Symbain is running flat at about 2.5 million units a month. So it has reached a stable level and the question is how do we get it to the next stage."