DAVID LEVIN took a call from the Department of Trade and Industry recently. The man from the ministry had been totting up his numbers and was astonished to learn that Levin’s company was the biggest inward investment in the south-east of England.

“Some $300m has flowed into the UK to create a software company in the middle of London,” Levin observes.

Another £17m came in last week when Samsung bought a 5% stake in Symbian, which is where Levin is chief executive. His firm has developed core software for increasingly clever mobile phones, which are evolving into games, music and video players that double up as electronic diaries, address books and internet browsers.

The amount invested is small change for the Korean electronics giant, which is now the world’s third-largest manufacturer of mobile phones.

Yet Samsung’s move was hailed as an important victory for Symbian and as a body blow to Microsoft’s ambitions to break into the mobile-phone market. Samsung had already licensed Symbian’s software but becoming a shareholder will give it a much greater say in its future development.

With Samsung’s commitment, Symbian appears to have the support of most leading handset manufacturers, including Nokia, Motorola, Panasonic, Siemens and Sony Ericsson.

Microsoft, it was suggested, would be left scrabbling for partners among the world’s smaller phone makers, such as HTC, the Taiwanese company that produces Orange’s SPV “smartphone”. An acrimonious legal dispute with Sendo, the tiny Birmingham-based handset company, suggests that these will not be easy relationships for Microsoft.

Fear of Microsoft’s cut-throat approach to business may have played some role in Samsung’s decision to make its commitment to Symbian. But Sang-Jin Park, a senior Samsung executive, also voiced concerns about the performance of the Microsoft phone software.

On Symbian’s rented yacht in Cannes, the venue last week for the mobile-phone industry's annual congress, Levin was almost embarrassed by the fervour of the reaction to the Samsung investment. After all, Samsung is still working with Microsoft, and had just unveiled a Windows-powered pocket computer, complete with phone and digital camera.

“It was good news,” says Levin. “It’s been a nightmare getting people (i.e. potential customers) on and off the boat without them seeing one another. That’s the measure of having a good week.”

Levin is particularly pleased that the price paid by Samsung values his company at £340m — the first concrete increase in valuation since Symbian was founded in 1998. In the technology frenzy of 1999-2000, the firm was briefly perceived to be worth billions — far more than that of Psion, the handheld- computer company that gave birth to it and where Levin used to be chief executive.

It is not hard to understand the excitement. Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson, then the world’s three largest handset manufacturers, had turned to tiny Psion to help them develop the operating system for the next generation of mobile phones. By agreeing a common, open standard, the companies could ensure that future phones would operate in a similar way. This should keep costs down and make life easier for consumers. The manufacturers could then concentrate on competing, not on proprietary software, but on the design, features and services that are expected to be the big differentiators in the years ahead.

This has given Symbian a ringside seat in the fight for control of the mobile handset market. Nokia has 40% of the market and exceptionally high profit margins for a consumer- electronics manufacturer. But it faces a triple jeopardy of challenges: from Microsoft, which is trying to extend its dominance of the desktop as computing goes mobile; from Samsung and other Asian manufacturers, which benefit from their experience of the more advanced technology already available in their domestic markets; and from network operators such as Vodafone, which are anxious to strengthen their brands in the eyes of their customers.