LONDON - Symbian Ltd., maker of the top operating system for "smart" cell phones, is licensing e-mail technology from Microsoft Corp., an unexpected deal with a rival that may bolster Microsoft's bid to extend its dominance in computer software to mobile devices.
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Neither company revealed the terms of the licensing agreement.
Symbian, a joint venture formed by some of the world's best known phone makers, has emerged as the best-selling platform for advanced cell phones designed to double as both handheld computers and mobile entertainment centers.
However, most of that success has come in European markets where lead investor Nokia Corp. is most influential. In North America and other markets, Symbian has gained only modest traction as compared with rival wireless platforms such as Palm and Windows Mobile from Microsoft.
Overall, the smart phone market remains quite small, leaving plenty of room for rivals to vie for customers as the devices grow more popular. According to the research firm IDC, converged mobile devices accounted for only a few percent of the more than 600 million phones sold in 2004, but that number is expected to grow sharply this year.
Marit Doving, executive vice president of marketing at Symbian, said the deal would allow the British company "to offer the broadest possible choice of e-mail and personal information management solutions."
Dave Thompson, corporate vice president of the Exchange Server Product Group at Microsoft, said the accord gave both companies the opportunity to expand the number of customers who can access their e-mail and other data from wireless services as demand for such services grows rapidly.
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Mobile phone operating software maker Symbian is licensing the Microsoft ActiveSync technology in a move that surprised analysts. The license would allow Symbian to develop a plug-in for mobile phones to let users check email that is served by Microsoft Exchange Server mail system.

Symbian was formed in 1998 by Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola and Psion in a collaborative desire to counter Microsoft's emerging market power in operating systems for handheld devices. While Microsoft now provides the Windows Mobile software for mobile phones, it has not attained significant market penetration. At the same time, in part through the increased popularity of Research in Motion's ''BlackBerry'' mobile email device, users have come to expect their mobile phones to synchronize email with various mail servers — including Exchange Server.

Symbian appears to be sensitive to the appearance of collaborating with the very competitor that spurred their creation. Symbian's press release emphasized that the licensing of the technology introduces just one of the many methods the Symbian software communicates with email servers. The spokesperson for the company, Peter Bancroft, was also on the defensive: "Microsoft isn't a monolithic company" he said, referring to the fact that Exchange Server and Windows Mobile are created by two different divisions of Microsoft.

Shares of Research in Motion dropped on the news.