New Symbian Licensee: Sharp

While not an enormous volume vendor, it was a helpful sign for Symbian to have captured a new licensee this week. Tony Smith, reporting for The Register said that Sharp will begin shipping Symbian-based handsets next year in an attempt to grow its handset sales outside Japan. Sharp Communications Systems president Masafumi Matsumoto is reported as having said that 70% of the companies handset sales are currently in Japan, but that the company would like to increase sales to 50% outside Japan. What will this mean for Sharp's Linux based PDAs?