Symbian Software Limited today announces that its shareholders have concluded an agreement regarding Symbian's future funding, governance and equity structure. From the presentation of Symbian's CEO, up to 2.4 million units of Symbian phones are shipped; and up to 12.4 million units are shipped from year 2000.

Shareholders have participated in a rights issue to raise £50m in additional funding for Symbian. Nokia, Panasonic, Siemens and Sony Ericsson have also agreed to participate in the pre-emption process for the purchase of Psion's equity stake in Symbian. The process is expected to complete on 12th July 2004. In addition, Shareholders have jointly agreed to appoint an independent, non-executive Chairman to the Symbian Board.

Highlights from the Press releases:

• £50m rights issue to accelerate investment in Symbian OS development to facilitate further adoption of Symbian OS as a platform for lower cost, mass market advanced phones.
• Symbian's costbase will expand from c.£70m to c.£100m per annum, with permanent employee & contractor headcount rising from c.900 to c.1,200.
• Symbian's continuing shareholders will appoint an independent, non-executive Chairman to the Board. The selection process is under way and is anticipated to be completed during the latter half of the year.
• The pre-emption process to determine allocation of Psion's 31.1% equity stake amongst Shareholders has been completed; the new shareholding structure will be as detailed in the table below.
• In subscribing to the rights issue and in purchasing Psion's equity, Shareholders will invest a total of £187.7m in their shareholdings in Symbian.
• Shareholder and non-shareholder Symbian OS licensees continue to expand their use of Symbian OS as a platform for advanced phones. At 30th June 2004, 34 phones and variants based on Symbian OS were being readied for market by 10 licensees. (Q2 2003 - 26 phones, 9 licensees) (see Notes to Editors for definitions).

Symbian's new shareholding structure after completion of the equity sale and rights issue will be as follows:

Read the full press releases here, there are few comments from varius representatives from Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens Mobile, Sony Ericsson, Samsung Electronics, Panasonic Mobile.

http://www.symbian.com/press-office/2004/pr040707.html

You can also download the presentation from Symbian CEO, David Levin here. There are some interesting chart.

http://www.symbian.com/press-office/downloads/040707TransactionPresent_web.pdf

Psion also announced disposal of Symbian stake

http://ww7.investorrelations.co.uk/psion/news/release.jsp?ref=367