Experts: No easy ride for Symbian in U.S.

Handheld software maker Symbian currently provides the operating system used on the lion's share of the world's smartphones, but the company will need to overcome competition from Microsoft and other hurdles in attempting to translate its global success to North America.

As in nearly every area of the mobile sector, North America -- and the United States in particular -- represents a vastly different market for smartphones than many other regions of the planet.

While business users and consumers in areas of Europe and Asia have already wrapped their arms around the more PC-like mobile devices, companies in the U.S. are only beginning to distribute the more powerful handhelds to larger numbers of workers.

London-based Symbian estimates that it currently provides the OS software running on 51.7 million smartphones worldwide out of a total market of 73 million of the devices, accounting for roughly 72.5 percent of the segment.

Based on that presence, the firm said it is aggressively moving to leverage its experience selling smartphones into the enterprise North American market specifically as demand for the devices increases over the next several years.

Microsoft may have ties to its other products to push use of Windows Mobile, and device makers themselves are plugging their own OS platforms, but the company's significant exposure to real-world enterprise smartphone deployments gives it the ultimate differentiator, according to Symbian executives.

"Our primary competition today is the homegrown operating systems from handset manufacturers, and our strategy is focused on displacement through helping North American operators move from homegrown systems to the Symbian OS for the next generation of devices, which will be smartphones," said Jerry Panagrossi, vice president of U.S. Operations at Symbian. "At this point, we don't need to go after the Windows Mobile market, which is still very small."

Unlike the operating systems offered by the handset makers and Microsoft, the company's latest Symbian OS v9.5 offers greater flexibility for different devices, better support for mobile business applications, and more robust tools for handset management and applications deployment, Panagrossi said.

By having fewer ties to specific platforms than its handset rivals -- many of whom are also Symbian partners and offer versions of their devices running on its OS -- the company also claims to take the most standards-based approach to its architecture, giving companies greater flexibility in choosing which applications they use on their smartphones.

Many companies may want a choice of which e-mail platform they deploy in their smartphones versus getting locked into one that is available on a particular handset or using only Microsoft systems, according to the company.

In terms of competing with Microsoft, Panagrossi said that Symbian can win over customers on issues of integration and security, among others.

Through its successes in Europe and Asia, the company has created a community of smartphone applications developers that dwarfs those of Windows Mobile and other systems, he said, giving customers not only more software programs to choose from, but also the option to consider a wider array of device form factors to meet specific business needs.