14 DAY TRIAL // The Symbian Foundation has announced today at the Symbian Exchange and Exposition 2009 (SEE 2009) the availability of Symbian Horizon, the application publishing program aimed at Symbian developers. According to the Foundation, developers now have the possibility to sign up for the program so as to have their apps included in the Symbian Horizon Directory, processed through Symbian Signed, and make them available via application store partners. According to the Foundation, Symbian Horizon has been designed to land a helpful hand to developers who want to deliver their applications to a wide range of mobile phone users.
The launch of Horizon is also meant to prove that the Symbian Foundation is committed to offering a better developer experience, while also helping devs build and promote their apps. As developers argued that there are many challenges and costs involved in developing and publishing a Symbian application, the Symbian Foundation came up with Horizon, this way offering cost reductions as well as improved access to the global market.
The Symbian Horizon was initially announced in July 2009, and the Foundation says that it has already processed a number of 50 applications through the program and that now it helps developers sign and submit their solutions to stores worldwide. The Symbian Horizon program is currently supported by a number of five stores, the company announced, including Ovi Store by Nokia, Samsung Applications Store and AT&T’s MEdia Mall, as well as China Mobile’s Mobile Market, and Sony Ericsson’s PlayNow arena.
“We recognize that developers face many challenges in bringing their products to market on Symbian devices,” said Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation. “In particular, the diversity of application stores in our ecosystem increases the burden on developers by requiring multiple submission and review processes. But this diversity can also offer an advantage over competitors’ closed systems, where applications sometimes receive arbitrary or commercially motivated rejections. Symbian Horizon retains this advantage while reducing the burden by becoming a conduit to multiple stores, helping developers reach the largest global mobile market in the world more efficiently.”
Developers who would like to participate to the program should know that there are three ways in which they can do so. Symbian Signed applications from them will appear in the Symbian Horizon Directory free of charge, Symbian noted. The directory offers a complete guide to every app, and is now live in a beta form. The Symbian Signed process is expected to be revised during the following few months, enabling developers to add apps to the Symbian Horizon Directory in an easy way. The Symbian Horizon publisher program is another step the initiative will take, aimed at enlarging the number of apps processed through this program. The final goal is the 2010 launch of a program that can process thousands of applications, the Foundation added.
“In developing the Symbian Horizon program, a careful analysis of the costs of processing applications has been completed and it is clear that this program will require a significant investment. In the course of the next few months, Symbian will be hosting an open conversation (on http://ideas.symbian.org) to explore options for funding the program. This is a critical issue for the Symbian ecosystem to address and the solution will ultimately depend upon collaboration from many contributors, including existing Symbian members, application stores, and the developers themselves. The plan for this program will be developed collaboratively with the input from all of these constituents,” the Symbian Foundation also noted.