With Symbian Horizon, developers will receive assistance in building applications for Symbian devices and in placing those applications in the many global stores which reach Symbian customers, and will receive promotional assistance for bringing those applications to end users. The goal of Symbian Horizon is to reduce barriers to success, while increasing the profitability of creating and delivering Symbian applications.
Upon general availability, companies and developers participating in Symbian Horizon will gain access to a variety of services that support the development, distribution, and marketing of mobile applications. From application certification and in-store presence, to language translation services and marketing programs – Symbian Horizon works with developers to create a single point of management and distribution to the largest group of mobile consumers worldwide.
According to a recent Gartner report, the Symbian OS on which the foundation's open source platform is based is installed on over 70 different types of mobile handsets across 26 countries, and Symbian accounted for 49.3% of the worldwide smartphone market share in the first quarter of 2009.
The Symbian platform is highly mature and has a long history of supporting multiple applications running concurrently, internationalisation and power management. These are critically important elements of smartphone application development which are not offered by other platforms. And Symbian is the only platform that supports a comprehensive runtime suite including Java ME, Adobe Flash Lite, native Symbian C++ and OpenC/C++, Python and a full web toolkit.
“Our goal is to encourage robust application development, increase revenue and application diversity in mobile stores, and improve the consumer experience, all for the greater benefit of the mobile ecosystem,” said Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation. “And we can help North American developers reach markets in Asia and Europe where the Symbian platform is widely known and loved. We are building a self-sustaining ecosystem that will drive the next generation of mobile and developers that join now are aligning themselves with the future of mobile.”
Symbian Horizon will provide new benefits to two primary communities within the Symbian ecosystem. The first community is made up of application store providers, either operator or manufacturer-based, such as Ovi Store by Nokia, Samsung Applications Store and AT&T’s MEdia Mall.