Symbian announced impressive numbers yesterday for Symbian OS smartphone sales in 2007. The company sold 77.3m Symbian OS licenses in 2007.

The current Symbian OS licensees include the following mobile handset makers: Fujitsu, LG, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sharp, and Sony Ericsson.

Despite these impressive numbers, I still stick to the opinion I wrote over a year ago that only Desktop operating systems will have a future on mobile phones.

There is no clear definition on what a smartphone is according to Wikipedia. For me a Symbian OS powered phone is not necessarily a smartphone.
I still actually use a Symbian OS phone (Nokia N80), because there is no small enough Windows, OS X or Linux phone available yet. The Nokias are thick but small in length and width. I don't want to carry around a PDA-size device to surf the web on the go.
Symbian is successful right now because it is sold on phones that are not bigger than other 'normal' phones.
Many consumers just need some of the features offered by a smartphone sometimes and therefore want only a small phone.

The new Windows OS running XPERIA X1 gets close, but is still a bit too long with 110mm (N80 is 95mm long).

More details on the Symbian numbers can be found here.

The Mobile World Congress 2008 (former 3GSM) will open officially on the 11th of February. We will keep you updated on all the interesting mobile technology announcements at the MWC 2008 in our Mobile Phone section.