James Delahunty
8 Feb 2006 7:10
In a bid to make its smart-phone operating system look more attractive to mobile phone manufacturers, Symbian has announced it will halve the cost of the software for phone makers. The move could see manufacturers paying just $2.50 per unit. Currently, handset manufacturers pay $7.50 per unit for the first 2 million units shipped, and then $5 each for every unit after that. After July, it will be introducing two new schemes that vendors can avail of.
Vendors can either choose to pay a percentage of the trade price of the devices they're offering or adopt "scaleable pricing that reduces as the licensee's total volume of shipments increase within a one-year period". Vendors will have to commit to either of these options for just a one year period, at the end of which they can choose to change or continue with the current scheme.
Symbian pointed out that this offer is available to all licensee's equally, obviously ensuring concerned vendors that the new system wasn't created to benefit Nokia solely, which owns 47.9% of the company. Some vendors that might have chosen Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system could now opt for Symbian software instead. During the third quarter of 2005, approximately 8.54m phones shipped with Symbian software, up 131% on the 3.7m units that shipped in the third quarter of 2004.
Source:
Reg Hardware