Symbian opens Indian devpt subsidiary

BANGALORE: Symbian Ltd has announced the formal foundation of Symbian Software India Pvt Ltd in Bangalore.

Symbian develops and licenses Symbian OS, the leading mobile operating system for advanced, data-enabled mobile phones, also known as smartphones, to the world's leading handset manufacturers.

According to the press release, Symbian intends to recruit in India during the second half of 2005 and beyond in order to expand its Bangalore development activities. The Bangalore development teams will focus on core Symbian OS and application technologies and product development to meet Symbian's growing customer and product requirements.

The release further states that this announcement signals Symbian's growing commitment to Symbian OS development in India. In 2003 Symbian established an Offshore Development Center (ODC) in Bangalore, in partnership with MphasiS Technologies with a commitment to developing a Symbian owned subsidiary by 2006. Symbian now has a 150-strong software development and engineering team based in Bangalore that complements the flexibility and strengths of Symbian's global software development activity. Symbian currently employs 1000 software engineers worldwide.

"We have already had a very positive experience of working with Indian software development teams, so we are happy to deepen our commitment to India in order to work with undoubted skills and expertise of the Indian software engineering community. Having a significant presence here in Bangalore brings Symbian one step closer towards having a globalized Symbian OS engineering base, enabling Symbian to meet its current business requirements and maintain its position as the global market leader," said Symbian VP, deputy head of software engineering Joakim Nilehn.