Mobile vendor strategies - 25/08/06

Symbian has shipped 24m Symbian OS units in the first half of this year (+ 66%).

Comverse is paying $19m for Netonomy, a developer of customer self-service, bill analysis and point of sale software for wireless communications.

BenQ-Siemens has launched two more handsets, the SL80 and the AL26.

Samsung has announced the launch of the SCH-B570 in South Korea, which comes with a built-in 8Gb hard disc drive.

BenQ said it will restructure its electronics manufacturing operations into a contract manufacturing division (with annual revenues of around NT$130bn) and a brand-business division (with annual revenue of about NT$160bn). The contract manufacturing division will be spun off next year. In addition, BenQ will spend an additional $400m on its handset business BenQ Mobile.