Symbian Limited, the developer and licensor of the Symbian OS mobile operating system, announced today that global shipments of Symbian OS phones rose 131 per cent to reach 8.54 million during the third quarter of 2005.

This sales surge takes the total shipment of handsets running the mobile OS to more than 23 million so far this year, according to the unaudited figures.

Symbian's estimates mean that the worldwide installed base of the platform has reached almost 48 million phones.

There are currently 60 separate Symbian OS models shipping worldwide from eight licensees, and a further 56 models are under development by 11 licensees.

Six new Symbian OS models commenced shipping in the third quarter from Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Nokia and Samsung, bringing the total number of phones commencing shipment in 2005 so far to 23 million.

Nigel Clifford, chief executive at Symbian Limited, said: "Symbian continues to progress in line with our expectations, with 8.5 million phones based on Symbian OS shipping in the third quarter to retailers and to more than 200 network operators, representing a 131 per cent increase in phone shipments on the equivalent period in 2004.

"Symbian's strategy continues to focus on driving the adoption of Symbian OS as a development platform both for advanced mobile devices and for lower price, high volume handsets.

"Importantly it also represents a platform on which network operators can deliver new non-voice services and content, particularly as commercial deployment of higher bandwidth 3G networks advances."