Huge day for Symbian: 100m phones and Skype soft-launch

Once again, Symbian overshadows the Windows Mobile and Palm smartphone sector. Today, the company claims to have over 100 million smartphones shipped that run the Symbian OS, which is staggering. Linux phones actually account for many standard handsets out there, but in the smartphone sector, Symbian has a large lion's share of the market.

In related news, there appears to be a soft-launch of Skype for Symbian, but that hasn't been confirmed by Skype. I did nose around the Skype Developer Zone but see no reference to a Skype client for Symbian just yet. However, in the big SlingPlayer Mobile cellular announcement by 3 Group yesterday, there was mention of Skype for the supported handsets: the Nokia N73 and the Sony Ericsson W950i.

Update: Om indicates that iSkoot, and not Skype, will be supported on Symbian phones under the 3 Group's X-Series handsets. iSkoot uses the Skype API, but is not certified by Skype. From an end-user point of view there is little to no difference, but it is an important clarification.