(Symbian timeline from Symbian.com. Click on image to see full-size version.)

Congratulations are in order for Symbian. A hundred million smartphones running the mobile OS have now shipped. Last May, Symbian reached another milestone, powering its one-hundredth smartphone model.

I see this as a well-deserved reward for Symbian Limited. Their efforts to create an OS that would work well on devices that have limited processing power and memory, and are constantly on, have paid off.

Whether you love or hate the Symbian OS, you can't deny the platform's success. Even as Sony-Ericsson buys its way out of this joint venture, the Symbian OS will continue to be dominant in the smartphone world--for many years to come.

Win a phone: Symbian's really grateful for its good fortune, so its giving away a free smartphone.