Sharp to offer Symbian OS phones next year, internationally

Sharp held a press event o­n the 8th regarding the company's cellular phone business, at which Masafumi Matsumoto (President of Sharp Communication Systems) presented that the company plans o­n investing in cellular phones that feature the Symbian OS next year.

Although the company currently offers phones for NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone domestically, all of these phones have used ITRON.

Mr. Matsumoto said that, "we currently ship 70% of our units domestically, but we would like to bring our international shipments up to 50% of the total. In this case, cellular phones featuring the Symbian OS would be easier to distribute throughout the world, and it would be easier to 'make a differentiation.' While we do not intended to have all of our products utilize the Symbian OS, we would like to gradually increase the percentage of our high-functionality products featuring the Symbian OS."