Futuremark Corporation, a leading provider of PC performance analysis software and services, announced today a strategic initiative with the launch of its new Benchmark Development Program for Symbian based Smartphones. This is a yet another example reflecting escalating popularity of powerful and feature-rich handsets.

Futuremark Corporation has completed the initial specification and has now started the implementation of the new mobile platform benchmark. It will measure the performance and power efficiency of Symbian based smartphones and will include OpenGL ES API 3D game scenes, image processing as well as native Symbian applications such as address book and calendar.

Key industry partners, including ATI, Imagination Technologies (PowerVR), Intel, Khronos Group, Neomagic, and NVIDIA, have joined Futuremark’s Smartphone Benchmark Development Program.

The completed benchmark is scheduled for shipment during the second quarter of this year. Smartphone Benchmark Development Program members have access to all development versions of the benchmark. Upon launch, the benchmark will become publicly available as binary executable.

Symbian is a software licensing company owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Panasonic, Psion, Samsung Electronics, Siemens and Sony Ericsson. The company supplies the Symbian OS open standards operating system for data-enabled mobile phones. Publicly announced products based on Symbian OS include the BenQ P30, Motorola A920, Sendo X, Siemens SX-1, Fujitsu F2102V and F2051, Sony Ericsson P800 and P900, Nokia 9210 Communicators and 9290 Communicator as well as the Nokia 7650, 6600, 3650, 3600 and N-Gage.