Symbian has confirmed that it will be changing its operating system pricing to encourage more phone manufacturers to use the code.

Although the company has seen over 100 per cent growth in the past four years Symbian is aiming to reduce the cost load on smaller manufacturers.

Current pricing is $7.25 per phone for the first two million units and $5 after that. But this initial price hit is being dumped to take out the cost disincentive for smaller producers.

"Symbian is focused on driving down the costs to our customers of developing and building Symbian OS phones while constantly enhancing the phones' performance," said Symbian chief executive Nigel Clifford.

"I am confident that our new pricing models will prove to be appealing to handset manufacturers and my initial discussions with our customers and partners is very positive.

"By supporting our customers with flexible pricing options, we can target a much wider and deeper market and drive Symbian OS into the high volume phone segments."

Under the new plan phone pricing could fall as low as $2.50 per phone, which would make the operating system more attractive and challenge Microsoft to lower the price for Windows Mobile or lose market share.

Symbian customers will have the option to adopt, on an annual basis, one of two additional pricing alternatives.

These are based on either a fraction of the trade price of devices shipping, or scaleable pricing that reduces as the licensee's total volume of shipments increase within a one year period.

The new pricing options are available to Symbian OS v9 shipments from July 2006.