Sasken is now a Symbian Competence Center

Sasken today announced that it has joined the Symbian Competence Center Program to support the growing market for smartphones based on Symbian OS™. As a Symbian Competence Center, Sasken is extending its services and technology portfolio into the Symbian OS ecosystem. Symbian develops and licenses Symbian OS, the operating system that powers today's most popular smartphones. Symbian OS is licensed by the world's leading mobile phone manufacturers and in 2004, more than 14 million phones based on Symbian OS were shipped worldwide.

“We are extremely happy to join the Symbian Competence Center Program, which underlines Sasken's expertise on Symbian. We believe that this association will enable us to help Symbian Licensees accelerate their product development and save significant R&D dollars” said Mr. Swami Krishnan, CMO - Sasken Communication Technologies Limited. “Sasken's association with Symbian is more than 4 years old and we are committed in ensuring that our wide range of experience in Wireless terminal software development and our expertise in application dev, porting, testing as well as handset integration becomes a valuable resource to Symbian licensees” he added.

“The smartphone business is rapidly growing and Symbian OS is at the heart of it. Symbian's policy of openness underpins industry models that create value for everyone and Sasken is delighted to be part of the Symbian OS ecosystem” opined Mr. Swami Krishnan.

Sasken offers a range of development and integration services, as well as a strong IP portfolio for those involved in smartphone development. By becoming a Symbian Competence Center, Sasken ensures the close integration of their solutions with smartphones based on Symbian OS, providing specialist skills and expertise to contribute to the creation and development of Symbian OS phones.

“Integration skills and a proven technology portfolio have become a fundamental requirement for developing today's smartphones,” said Alan Roderick, Head of Partner Marketing, Symbian. “We are pleased to have Sasken join the Symbian Competence Center Program and bring its decade long expertise in various facets of telecommunication technology to the Symbian ecosystem.”

About the Symbian Competence Centre Program To speed up product development of Symbian OS phones, Symbian has established a program skills and expertise to contribute to management, creation and development of Symbian OS phones. These companies specialize in developing software for Symbian OS and share a close relationship with Symbian and Symbian OS licensees. For more information please see www.symbian.com/partners/platinum.html About Sasken Sasken, a pioneer in telecom R&D outsourcing, offers a unique combination of complementary IP software components, research and development consultancy and software services to leading semiconductor manufacturers, network equipment companies, and global wireless handset developers. Established in 1989, Sasken employs over 2,200 staff, operating from state-of-the-art research and development centers in Bangalore and Pune, India and has offices in Canada, China, Germany, Japan, Sweden, France, the UK and the United States. For more information, visit Sasken on the web at www.sasken.com.

About Symbian Ltd Symbian is a software licensing company that develops and licenses Symbian OS™, the global open industry standard operating system for advanced, data-enabled mobile phones. Symbian licenses Symbian OS to the world's leading handset manufacturers. The following Symbian OS licensees have Symbian OS-based mobile phones in production and / or in development: Arima, BenQ, Fujitsu for NTT DoCoMo FOMA, LG, Lenovo, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Sendo, Sharp, Siemens, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. In the first quarter of 2005, more than 6.75m Symbian OS-based mobile phones were sold worldwide, taking the installed base of Symbian OS phones to more than 32 million. Symbian has its headquarters in London, United Kingdom with offices in the United States, Europe, Israel and Asia (Bangalore, Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo). For further information about Symbian please see www.symbian.com or email press@symbian.com.

Contacts: Kiran Singh, Sasken (D) +91 80 5694 4673 ksingh@sasken.com (M) +91 98866 73910