Symbian reported a huge jump in the number of mobile phones shipping with its operating system on board. It claims the 52% increase is due to larger sales volumes in Japan.Another reason Symbian-based phones are likely making waves is because they are the platform behind many smartphones, and smartphones are gaining steam in the market. In fact, sales of smartphones leaped 70% between the third quarter of 2006 and the first quarter of 2007. Yowza. That's a pretty big increase. Over 80 million smartphones were sold in 2006, and 47.5% of them were based on Symbian.

A total of 18.7 million Symbian handsets were shipped in the second quarter, which contributed to a 7% increase in revenues for Symbian. Symbian is software licensing company that is owned by Nokia (47.9%), Ericsson (15.6%), Sony Ericsson (13.1%) Panasonic (10.5%), Siemens (8.4%) and Samsung (4.5%).

Japan's market is the most advanced mobile market in the world. Symbian is the platform behind the FOMA MOAP phones in Japan, S60 from Nokia, and Sony Ericsson's UIQ. Canalys says that Symbian represents fully 72% of the world's smartphone market. RIM is a distant second with 7.5%.

Despite these figures, Symbian has yet to really make a strong presence in the U.S.