Symbian OS - technical definition

An open standard operating system for data-enabled mobile phones (smartphones) from Symbian Ltd., London (www.symbian.com). It supports Java, PC synchronization, Bluetooth local wireless access and GPRS packet-switched data. The first phone to use Symbian OS was the Nokia 9210 Communicator in 2001. Out of more than a billion cellphones shipped worldwide in 2007, more than a hundred million were smartphones. Three quarters of the smartphones ran Symbian OS.

Evolving from the EPOC operating system, the company was originally the Psion Software division of Psion PLC (www.psion.com). In 1998, Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola and Psion created the company to support the EPOC OS as an independent entity. See EPOC.