International Headquarters of Symbian Ltd - London, UK, EU

In this article we present you global headquarters of Symbian Ltd - how to get there and how it looks from outside.

We have digital cameras with ultra-zoom and we could make photos of all cars parking at Symbian (including registration plates), photos of people entering the building, shots of the office from the distance, etc. But we haven done it! We just took some photo shots from the outside to get a feeling how headquarters of Symbian look like. After all Symbian delivers software to over 90% of smart phones (smartphones without touch screen and PDA phones with touch screen) currently sold... and market share of smart phones in total mobile phone market is raising quickly from less than 1% 2 years ago, to a couple % today and even more in future. In other words: there will be millions more mobile phones powered by Symbian in years to come. And in this game Microsoft is just an underdog. Minor underdog.

Let's take an imaginary journey to Symbian headquarters. Where are global headquarters of Symbian? In Europe! Being more specific: in European Union in a country called "United Kingdom" (UK) or more specifically "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". London is the biggest city in UK and the biggest city in EU, although it is "only" second largest city in Europe (the biggest one is Moscow, in Russia). How can you get to London? Well, most common way of doing it is by airplane to one of air ports of London: Heathrow (for rich people), Gatwick (for poor people), Stansted (for even poorer people) or Luton (for poorest people). Once you arrived to an airport, then you use "[airport name] Express" train to get from an airport to the city of London proper. When in London then you usually use underground (subway) to get to a place, where Symbian is. So while in London you should use Jubilee line and go with it to the underground station "Southwark" (this station is named after the city district of London and borough of the same name: "Southwark"). When you get of the train on Southwark station you see something like this:



... where you can notice that people are protected from jumping under the train by special transparent barrier with doors (just in case some Symbian employee would be so despaired because Microsoft endangers future of Symbian) that opens only after the train arrived. Such barrier is not to be found in all underground train stations in London. Interestingly on the right side of above photo you can see big advertisement of a PDA phone not powered by Symbian: Xda IIi from O2 UK operator and powered by Windows Mobile from Microsoft! So poor Symbian employees commuting to work by underground have to see big advertisement of Microsoft phone...

After getting out of the Southwark subway station you need to turn right and go along the Blackfriars Road street toward Boundary Row street:



While on Blackfriars Road street you can notice a building with big text "Computacenter". It is "Computa" like "Computer" - but in funny way, and "center" (strangely not "centre" as it is spelled in British). To the right side of the building with "Computacenter" there is a Boundary Row street:



Already the first look into Boundary Row street gives a us a view of Symbian headquarters:






Closer look at a plate with Boundary Row street name surprised us - this plate was shabby and looked like it was never renewed:




Under the street names you can notice "London Borough of Southwark" and "Borough of Southwark" texts, that indicate that we indeed are in Southwark - a district of London.

Moving closer to the entrance we noticed 3 tables, used by Symbian employees to drink beer in the open air:




And here is the main entrance to the Symbian headquarters:





Here is closer look at the logo of the Symbian above the entrance:



Here is the look at Symbian磗 headquarters from the other side:



On the other side of the Boundary Row street, across from the building of Symbian headquarters there is small parking place and a building that is also partially occupied by Symbian (see some photos below):



Building of Symbian磗 headquarters is round at the end:



... and on the back side it almost doesn have any windows:



As mentioned previously Symbian also occupies smaller building on the other side of "Boundary Row" street (just behind above mentioned "Computacenter"):





Clearly whole premises of Symbian are equipped with security cameras and while we were making photos of Symbian building we were also being taped by security cameras:

Conclusion: the global headquarters of Symbian constitute mainly of a relatively small building located in London. Big corporations usually have much bigger buildings and in fact since big corporations own Symbian and have themselves many people developing software and GUI platforms for Symbian, Symbian is more than it seems to be. However Symbian still is controlled in 49% by Nokia, company, that sells 90% of all Symbian based phones and company, that refused to go public with Symbian - refused to sell it on stock market. Not being public company Symbian is therefore much less open and this little article could maybe give you a glimpse at this "British company" that is not even in 1% owned by British people - Psion, British company, that is the originator of EPOC operating system on which Symbian was based, sold their shares after learning that Nokia refuses to go public with Symbian and after seeing Nokia brutal domination of Symbian. Symbian is now owned by Koreans (Samsung - 4.5%), Swedes (Ericsson - 15.6%), Japanese (Sony Ericsson - 13.1%, Panasonic - 10.5%), Finns (Nokia - 47.9%) and Germans (Siemens - 8.4%). Yes, headquarters of Symbian are located in London, UK, but 100% of ownership and majority of developments are done outside of UK by non-Brits. Calling Symbian a British company is therefore a misconception.

If Nokia will not dump Symbian (as Nokia did with GEOS in past and switched to Symbian) and not move to Linux, then Symbian will remain a company that dominates mobile phone market in smart phones area...