The Symbian Foundation today announced a launch date for its application-publishing program, Symbian Horizon, available to the public in October. The platform opens up app development suport to developers across the globe who will receive assistance in building and promoting apps for Symbian devices.
According to the non-profit organization, formerly a part of Nokia, the goal of Symbian Horizon is to reduce barriers to success while increasing profitability of creating and delivering Symbian apps. Through Horizon developers will get access to programs for app certification, in-store presence, language translation services and marketing, all of which are aimed at creating a unified point of management and distribution.
While certainly not the most-hyped operating system, Symbian runs on more than 70 different types of mobile handsets in 26 countries. In the first quarter of the year, research firm Gartner said it accounted for 49.3% of worldwide smartphones. As with Nokia, however, the majority are outside of the US. While it won’t yet help developers make inroads here, Lee Williams, Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation, said that Horizon can instead help North American developers reach markets in Asia and Europe where the Symbian OS is commonplace.
Symbian supports multiple development platforms, including JavaME and Adobe Flash Lite, and can also port apps to multiple app store providers, including Nokia’s own Ovi Store, Ovi-supporter AT&T’s MEdia Mall or Samsung’s Application Store. Developers that Symbian has already signed up include Dynatech, The Guardian, MobileIron, National Public Radio, Skout, Ustream and Wine.com.
At the Spring CTIA show, Foundation members stressed Symbian’s strength in lower-level, but nonetheless important apps like extended battery life and improved calling. They also noted that Symbian would eventually support touch screens and widgets – popular today, yet uncharted territory for Symbian. Although it’s now an independent entity, Symbian’s biggest challenge will continue to be its close ties to Nokia, an image which it plans to overcome with the open-source nature of the initiative and programs like Horizon. The Foundation maintains it is on track for the entire OS to be open source by June 2010.