Symbian currently holds the largest marketshare for mobile device operating systems in the world.  They have shipped more than 300 million devices worldwide and in 2009 shipped 80 million devices.  This is more than 2nd - fourth place mobile OSs combined.  RIM shipped 34 million, Apple iPhone shipped 25 million and Windows mobile shipped 15 million.  (Source Gartner Feb 2010)

But things aren't as well as they look on paper from the numbers, Symbian has lost 8.5% of their marketshare over just one year (from 52.4% in 2008) and it is declining fast.  Their offering is out of date, clunky and is lackluster compared to the likes of iPhone, Blackberry and the new quickly rising (soon to be) star, Android.  It is expected that in 2010, these three will eat up even more of Symbian's marketshare and if they don't do something to improve, their lead will be eroded and soon become totally irrelevant.

There is another point that is worth discussing while looking at these numbers.  All of Symbian's devices are not the same class of "smartphone" that we would group in the same category as iPhone, Android and blackberry devices.  Many are smaller, cheaper phones with dumbed down features for the masses, not what we would call full blown smartphones.

Looking a little deeper there are even more problems with Symbian.  Nokia (who builds the vast majority of Symbian devices), has not been able to break in the the American market in a meaningful way.  This is not the end of the world, but it is an important market none-the-less.  Next, they are late on their application store.  Obviously, Apple / iPhone has the lead but Android and blackberry are proving to be great fighters and soon will have very good offerings.  Nokia has released the Ovi store to lackluster fanfare in 2009, they will have to invest heavily to improve and simplify for both consumers and developers.

So what is Symbian doing about it?  Will they be able to retain their lead and fight off Apple, Google Android and Blackberry? 

First, as an interim step they are building and releasing Symbian 3, which is supposed to be feature complete by end of Q1 2010 with the first handsets possibly available in Q3.   Two interesting facts are that Symbian 3 will support both C++ and Qt development environments and secondly, they will offer Symbian 3 OS for free to OEM manufacturers.  With Android being open source and free, this is a key move by Symbian.  Windows new mobile OS, series 7 is coming at the end of 2010 too but it is rumoured that they will be charging for it.  This may make Windows Series 7 dead in the water before it is even released.

Here is a video demo of the new Symbian 3 mobile operating system

But Symbian 3 is only an interim step.  Symbian 4 is their redemption opportunitiy and what will bring them back to relevance.  So they hope. 

Symbian 4 is in the early phases of development and is expected to be fully functional by the second half of 2010 with devices shipping in the first half of 2011.  Their new flagship mobile OS will focus on the user experience with a new touch based UI.  They will develop for both touch only and hybrid devices with a touch screen and a physical keypad.   

Here is a video demo of the new Symbian 4 home screen
 

Symbian 4 will have new and enhanced applications.  Here are some photos and a video with the proposed new Photos application. 

New "winning" user experience.  (their claim)

Applications for Symbian 4 will be built with Qt and Orbit, which Symbian says will make it easy to develop new applications and update those already available.  They say Qt will revolutionize application development.  That is a hefty claim with Apple's iPhone SDK in the ranks.  (techies can find a Qt technical overview here and the Symbian 4 Development wiki here)

Here is a graphic of the Qt benefits

It looks like Symbian is making a good effort to catch up.  Will it be to little too late though, in 1 - 1.5 years from now, by the time Symbian 4 handsets are released to consumers, it will be 4 years after the ultra successful iPhone was released.  We don't expect the competitors to be sitting on their laurels during this time, expect even more advancements.  By that time will Symbian 4 be behind again?

One thing Symbian has going for it is their marketshare and branding.  Most people don't even know they have a Symbian phone or not, they just know they have a Nokia.  Many people are quite loyal to their Nokia phones around the world, there is a chance that, if (and it is a big if), Symbian + Nokia gets their offering right, for the right price, with the right features and amazing usability, that they will be able to retain much of their marketshare. 

Only time will tell if they can keep their lead or not.  What do you think?