Richard: Peter, why has Symbian changed the focus of this year’s event?

Peter: It’s really about the market and Symbian’s position in it. A lot has changed since the last Symbian Expo in April 2003. The smartphone market has moved from nascent to emerging. We are seeing 3G as a reality outside Korea and Japan, and Symbian has now shipped over 15 million devices into Europe, Asia and the US.

So the profile of the smartphone industry has changed. The recent announcement regarding the capital investment by our shareholders has also started to make the broader industry realize that the smartphone market is not a niche, it will be the mobile phone market in a few short years.

Our past events have catered to the early adopters, an audience of developers and partners. Now we believe that the time is right to move the event on to a more mainstream trade show, and we have received broad encouragement for the move. So this year the show will bring together companies representing the complete smartphone industry supply chain from operators and retailers at one end through to semi-conductor vendors at the other, with all points in between represented.

We expect the show will be a commercial meeting point, providing the opportunity for all the participants in the industry to network, make contacts, meet customers and suppliers. For newcomers there will be seminars and training to provide them with the opportunity to learn about Symbian OS and the ecosystem.

We are very excited about the show’s evolution.

Richard: So for those who have been to the earlier shows, what changes will they notice?

Peter: The most obvious change will be the size of the show. This year we have doubled the floor space compared to last year. At the same time we have been working to make sure everything is accessible and open.

So we will have enterprise demonstrations on the floor of the show, covering a range of solutions for the mobile enterprise, both tools that are available out of the box now plus a range of exciting technologies that will be coming on stream in the next year to 18 months such as push-to-talk, connectivity, location based services, groupware and SIP based application. There will be no need to tramp off to a separate venue for the demonstrations and showcases, delegates will not have to leave the floor.

We have also responded to feedback about the training and this year it will be much more hands-on, not like the quasi-lectures of previous years.

Also as the show is bigger and we know everyone has limited time to make those essential contacts we are providing a system to allow delegates to book times with the exhibitors, or with other delegates. There will be no need to troop backwards and forwards between stands in the hope that the person you want to talk to will be free. It can all be arranged on-line before the event.

Richard: Given the change in emphasis who do you hope will be attending the show this year?

Peter: Ultimately we hope there will be a rich mix of participants. Obviously the event will still be an opportunity for our partners, licensees and developers to network but we also expect that there will be interest from a wide range of sectors.

We certainly expect there to be a strong presence from the business and enterprise sector. The forward thinking IT Vendors, Systems Integrators and CIOs who want to know about the technologies they can deploy today, but also those that will be emerging over the next few years, to allow them to deliver mobility to their enterprises.

We are also seeing a lot of interest from content owners, those companies with significant global brands and identities, who are interested in delivering content and services to smartphones.

Ultimately we want people who have a genuine interest in Symbian OS and what it can enable. We will also welcome those whose interests are not commercial, such as shareware or freeware developers.

Richard: How are registrations going?

Peter: They are very good, running significantly ahead of our expectation.

Richard: This year’s sponsors are an interesting industry roll call, are you pleased with the interest?

Peter: We have been very pleased with the interest from sponsors. As you will see from the announcements we have representatives from the complete breadth of the industry from The Carphone Warehouse and Vodafone at the consumer end, through to device vendors such as Motorola and Sony Ericsson to silicon supplier Texas Instruments complimented by solutions providers like Thin Print and OpenBit and development tools suppliers like Metrowerks.

Take the Carphone Warehouse, which is Europe’s biggest distributor of phones. Symbian has been working with them for a number of years. In fact we have a program where all our new engineers spend time working behind the counter there. Selling phones to the public gives them an excellent opportunity to gain a better understand of consumer attitudes towards our technology. Carphone Warehouse’s participation as a sponsor shows that smartphones are becoming increasingly important to the whole mobile value chain.

So in the same way the exhibitors are a reflection of the whole industry, so are the sponsors. It reinforces the fact that the show represents a gathering of the people and organizations which will make the smartphone industry happen. It also shows the fact that success in the mobile and smartphone market will be based on the value of the industry being distributed across a wide range of participants.

Richard: Finally Peter what do you hope attendees will take away from the show?

Peter: This has been the main vision we have been using to guide much of what we are doing at the show this year.

This year has seen a step change in terms of Symbian’s development, moving from proving the technology with relatively small volumes to really putting the pieces together to take Symbian OS into the mass market with broad industry support.

When the visitors leave the show this year we hope that they will take away a realization that smartphones are here, their position in the market is growing, they will soon be everyday phones and that Symbian is at the center of this development without dictating to the market.

In September we will be offering a full preview of the show and announcing details of our extensive live reports during the event and post show round up. If you are participating at Exposium and would like to be included in the preview please drop us a note at info[at]symbianOne.com.

For more information on the Smartphone Show visit the show’s site www.symbian.com/expo.