The Symbian Investor

The Symbian Investor

This page no longer updated

Since Psion decided to sell its stake in Symbian to Nokia, we stopped updating this site....sorry!

Welcome to the Symbian Investor page. This page was designed to help people who want to check out the Symbian OS as an investment, past present and future. The page was written by Ron Mertens, with contributions from David Sharman. Ron believes that Symbian has a good future before it whilst David prefers to keep a dispassionate and open mind on this.

Psion to sell its symbian stake to Nokia.

Psion has announced its intention to sell all of its Symbian stake to Nokia. The deal is certain as it got shareholders approval. This seems like a deadly blow to a wannabe "symbian investor" -

There is no way to invest in symbian now (The stake of symbian in companies such as nokia, samsung or SE is too small compared to the holding company!)
Symbian future now seems more risky - will it become a Nokia OS only?
A float is very unlikely, at least till 2005

So what is this Symbian thing anyway?

Okay, if you don't know much about Symbian check out these pages -

Symbian Shareholders

Nokia - 32.2%
Psion - 31.1% [*]
Ericsson - 17.5%
Panasonic - 7.9%
Samsung - 5%
Siemens - 4.8%
Sony Ericsson - 1.5%

[*] Psion decided to sell its symbian stake to Nokia. Note that other shareholders might use their preemption rights and participate in the deal, so current shareholding is not yet finalized. Ericsson said they will acquire part of the shares.

Handset Figures

David has compiled a great deal of data on handset figures, smartphone shipments, etc. You can view cuts by geographic regions, OS, vendor, and so on. A file (In Microsoft Excel format) of historical data can be downloaded here. and one scenario of the possible future demand can be downloaded here.
Symbian started to report handset shipment figures. Here's the first report - August 21, 2Q2003. Symbian reports 1.49 Million handsets sold in this quarter (The phones are Nokia's 7650, 3650 and 92xx, SE P800 and the F2051 in Japan).
Symbian 2003 Q3 shipment figures. November 20, 3Q2003. Symbian reports 1.23 Million handsets shipped (The phones are Nokia's 7650, 3650, 3600 and 92xx, SE P800 , the F2051 and F2102 in Japan and the Motorola A920 3G handset).
Symbian 2003 Q4 shipment figures. February 23, 4Q2003. Symbian reports 2.76 Million handsets shipped, first month (December) of over 1million shipments. Over 10 million handsets sold worldwide with symbian inside.

Investment Opportunities

In this section, I will try to introduce suggestions about investing for people that believe in Symbian. If Symbian succeeds in becoming the dominating mobile OS, there are lot's of companies that may benefit!

Symbian - Symbian is currently privately held, and thus is not a viable investment option. It is well known that a float is planned in Symbian, when they make good results (at least break-even) and the markets are favorable.
Psion -Psion decided to sell their symbian holdings to Nokia, in March 2003. Part of the deal is royalties for units sold till 2006. So if you think these units will soar, you might wish to participate through Psion (although the numbers assumed on the deal were very high indeed). If there's an IPO of symbian till 2005 (highly unlikely if Nokia is at the helm) then Psion will be compensated as well.
M-Systems - Providers of Flash memory solutions, this israeli company is one of Ron's favorites... This company has design wins with 4 out of 5 major handset vendors (according to their latest press releases) and thus is linked with Symbian (In fact, they were the first platinum partner). The SE P900 is using M-System's MDOC for flash memory. These flash devices are targeted at high-end smartphones. M-Systems has other business (DiskOnKey, DiskOnChip) and is traded in the NASDAQ (FLSH)
Nokia - Nokia is the largest shareholder in symbian (32.2%), and is the most active one, and it recently agreed to purchase Psion's share in Symbian as well. . It has the most devices out, and is also licensing the Series60, Series80 and Series90 reference designs. Nokia is also betting on symbian in other markets, such as mobile gaming (with the N-Gage device). It seems that if Symbian succeeds, Nokia will be a dominant player in many fields, growing beyond the handsets market.
Ericsson - Ericsson is a large shareholder in Symbian (Actually 2nd largest now). They also plan to increase their stake in Symbian.
Opera - Makers of the popular (well, almost) and excellent web browser. This is the browser of choice in Symbian platforms. The SE P900 comes with this browser embedded, and there are ports to Series 60 as well. They also have versions for windows (free with ads), linux, be and whatever OS you can think of... Opera trades in the Norwegian Stock Exchange, check this link.
Microsoft/Palm - For the brave of heart, going against Palm and Microsoft is an option. Palm can be hit badly if Symbian smartphones are a success, because the first market share the smartphones will grab will probably be the PDA market (of course Palm tries to address this market, with the Handspring Treo range). If Symbian becomes a dominant OS provider, this may hit Microsoft in the future. Like I said, only for the brave of heart...

Future Investment Opportunities

Not yet, but maybe soon? There are several companies that would have been an interesting investment, but are not yet public. My current leading candidates are -

Digia - A designer and integrator of Symbian™ OS based software for smartphone manufacturers. Digia released great results showing growth and profit, and are starting to mull a float...

Disclaimer

The Symbian Investor is an independent website and in no way affiliated to Symbian Ltd. The views contained on this site do not necessarily represent the views of Symbian and content may not be approved or verified by Symbian Ltd. Symbian and all Symbian based marks and logos are trade marks of Symbian Limited. To access the Symbian website please visit www.Symbian.com