In an effort to accelerate the speed of the Symbian mobile operating system, the Symbian Foundation recently released a new publishing tool aimed for developers.
The new tool, Symbian Horizon, is designed to convince developers to create Symbian apps, with software to be sold through several different outlets. The Symbian Foundation is working with application stores from Samsung and AT&T, and will also offer apps through the Nokia Ovi Store.
Symbian Horizon will officially launch in October, and will help provide developers with a distribution and marketing infrastructure, along with technical support from the organization. Developers will now have a legitimate way to create apps for Symbian while also receiving language translation services and assistance on apps if needed.
"Symbian is looking for apps that cover a wide range of needs. Free or paid apps are welcome, apps that take advantage of mobile features like GPS and web integration are especially interesting, as are the standard categories like games and utilities," the foundation said in a statement. "We are primarily interested in apps that use the Symbian^1 platform but any recent platform will also get high consideration."
The Symbian Foundation lost a strong supporter after splitting away from Nokia, and now faces stiff competition from Apple, Research In Motion, and other companies. Symbian took a further blow when the Google Android operating system was released, which has led to some phone manufacturers leaving behind Symbian in favor of the open source OS.
Interested developers can head to http://www.symbian.org/horizon to learn more.
