3GSM World Congress
Arima Group and Symbian Limited announced today that Arima, a leading manufacturer of mobile terminals, notebooks PCs and opto-electronics, has signed an agreement to license Symbian OS for Arima’s development of smartphones for 2.5G and 3G networks worldwide.
Arima plans to develop a series of market-driven, advanced smartphones to sell to the world’s leading mobile phone companies and mobile network service providers under an Original Design Manufacturing (ODM) business model. Arima is a leading ODM supplier of GSM/GPRS terminals to many top- tier brands worldwide.
Arima’s first product, based on Symbian OS v7.0 will use the UIQ user interface platform licensed from UIQ Technology. UIQ is a customizable pen-based user interface platform for media- rich mobile terminals based on Symbian OS. Arima’s first Symbian OS-based smartphone will be the ASP805 which is scheduled to launch later this year. Symbian OS licensees now account for over 85% of worldwide mobile phone sales. In 2003, more than 6.67million phones based on Symbian OS were shipped worldwide.
Stephen Lee, CEO, Arima Group, said: “We are very pleased to sign this agreement which enables Arima to use Symbian OS as a platform for our smartphone development. We were able to rapidly develop the advanced ASP805 that our customers are already asking for. We will leverage our well established capabilities and resources to provide terminal suppliers with an alternative source of competitive Symbian OS platform designs, which allows us flexibility in customizing features and Industrial Design outlooks that meet customers’ expectations.”
David Levin, CEO, Symbian Limited, said: “We are very pleased to welcome Arima as a Symbian OS licensee. Arima is one of the world’s leading original design mobile terminal manufacturers with a worldwide customer base. We very much look forward to working with Arima to develop Symbian OS phones for customers worldwide.”