Building anything worthwhile is never easy; building something good is extremely difficult. Mobile apps are especially tricky. Working with device, platform and operator variations compound the challenge of making something useful and useable. Once the app is built developers still need to take it to market. To do that the app needs to pass security and QA tests, and the developer has to configure meta-data and set pricing. Then the app is published to each individual App Store, one store a at time. What a hassle.
The core idea behind Symbian Horizon (http://www.symbian.org/horizon) is making the business and distribution of Symbian apps easier. Horizon is a publisher program similar to a book publisher or record label. Developers can submit their app or even an idea for an app that they will build. Symbian will select the best apps and help take them to market. We will sign the app, publish it to the App Stores and manage the transactions, all at no cost to the developers. It is a ‘code once, publish to many’ syndication service.
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. We are primarily interested in apps that use the Symbian^1 platform but any recent platform will also get high consideration.
What’s the catch? There isn’t one. We want great apps, the stores want great apps, mobile users want great apps too. Devices are increasingly judged by the enhancements that they support. We see Horizon as the best way to help developers, enhance the value of Symbian and the value of the entire mobile market.
Today, most of the processes behind this program require manual tasks. Our goal for the near future is to develop a system that will automate this work allowing us to scale the program to include as many apps as possible. We want every Symbian app to be available online and on devices, through as many of the App Stores as possible.
If you are an established developer or thinking of coding your first mobile app, we want to hear from you. Please submit your app or idea here: http://www.symbian.org/horizon
14 Comments
>>We will sign the app<<
Who believes symbian signing? When Nokia can't trust it then who else? Nokia Ovi store has its own QA and they throw away lots of symbian signed app.
Step one – Get a front page link on developer.symbian.org
Good idea though, well done
If I join Horizon. Will you give me DevCert so I can test my app on my own device without having to submit it to symbiansigned.com each time I change the binary?
Is this a response to the Apple iPhone store?
@Stringer Bell – you can still get a DevCert if you’ve got a publisher ID, it’s called “Open Signed Offline” these days. Symbian Signed is being re-vamped to make it easier and cheaper to get a publisher ID. Where this still isn’t an option for people, the team are also looking at ways to increase the availability of DevCerts. This should be available to everyone, not just those joining Symbian Horizon.
Don’t the various app stores all have different royalty percentages, trial mechanisms, exclusivity requirements (their website URL in the app help screen etc.)?
Will they be prepared to adjust these to get in on the Horizon deal?
It’s very nice that Symbian Foundation is “in discussions” with 7 application stores. In my opinion, this is one of the most important aspects to convince a developer to port his/her application to Symbian.
Having an enormous potential market helps. Let’s hope these discussions end in success.
I am not a developer, but i think you should use your energy and time on redesigning your Symbian OS and make the developing tool more friendly to use. is like a artist need a good set of tools that’s a total pleasure to use, so people have hope and WANT to make software for you!
I have so little hope for Symbian in today’s Software war, it’s so last century. not LG, Samsung is all doing way better, You guys need to change the way to games, and fire the those who is not will to change and standing in the way.
I think Nokia these days have lost the lead in Hardware and software design. even your Symbian.org website design is bad, the font you design team used for the website makes me think that Symbian system looks really cheap and more like a joke. it’s time to get serious! Also If you can, you need to redesign Nokia.com too.
Worst operating system. Why?
- No notifications or error messages when an error occurs.
- 40% success rate for connecting towards PC Phone Suites.
- Settings are all over the place, are not organized into 1 category.
- Phone internet and WLAN interruptions, no notification message about this.
- Phone internet does not display on Connection Manager and is not logged.
- File manager is useless if you do not have a mouse attached to your phone. File manager should be made less complicated.
I use: Sony Ericcson P1i (Operating System: Symbian)
Previous: Nokia N95 ( Operating System: Symbian)
It’s important to understand before coming on here and criticizing that Symbian is a platform for the creation of mobile operating systems, not a mobile operating system in itself (at least at the moment). Any criticisms you might have are likely due to poor design practice by the OEM. Symbian can do any and all of the things you mentioned, but it’s up to the phone manufacturer to make it happen on the device. For example, in the Nokia 5800 (and should be for the N95 as well), the phone internet stats are shown (Signal, Sent, Recieved etc.). Also, your comments on ‘no error messages’ are a bit strange. I see them on my phone.
So, instead of just letting developers create an application and release it for anyone in the world to use, at their own price and on their own terms, Symbian is creating a whole new middle-man to make it more difficult to get their product to the end user.
Your developer base would increase 100x if it didn’t cost hundreds of dollars to allow one application to be created, or perhaps the incredible idea of operating systems which were compatible with previous versions of applications.
It would appear those involved in designing these mobile platforms *want* it to be as complicated as possible to design and release applications, as if it would be a terrible thing if anyone could simply create content and give it to the people to use without complication or worry. Has no one learned from Microsoft’s successes?
Hi Peter,
Let’s face facts. The reality is that the value chain (including network operators) is already imposing a range of checks and tollgates before certain kinds of applications and content can be distributed. One response to this reality is to campaign for all such checks and tollgates to be removed. Personally I think that’s completely infeasible: bad applications and content can do damage to devices, networks, and users’ bills. Some kinds of checks are, therefore, inevitable.
However, the reason for Horizon is that Symbian (working in partnership with community members) will assist developers to handle the checks and tollgates as smoothly and as quickly as possible.
No, the point of the “new middle-man” (as you call it) is to make is more easy for developers to get their product to the end user.
Agreed, we must drive as much cost as possible out of the development process. The wider the range of applications that can be developed without any cost whatsoever, the better!
Agreed, the incompatibilities between the API sets on different handsets cause developers major problems. That’s why Symbian is aggressively seeking better compatibility between handsets. (But that’s not to say that handsets will always be compatible. It’s just to say that compatibility breaks need better monitoring and review.)
// David W.
This is a comment from an end user and not a developer..
I have a Samsung i8910. It is a great device and the hardware is fantastic. The symbian OS 5th edition is great and far better than my previous winMo phone.
I have recenlty been playing with an Iod Touch and have used the app store to download various things. To put it mildy, Apple’s Apps store is brilliant. Its fast and easy to use. The apps all take advantage of the hardware (easier as it is a single platform) and some of them are fantastic.
While there are some great apps out there on sites such as Ovi and the beta version of Samsungs app store (while its a start its full of over priced and outdated software) there are none that really take advantage of the powerful hardware currently available.
Apps for the iPhone are advertised on lots of major sites (Sky, BBC etc) and while Symbian versions are available – the wide variety of handsets etc inevitably will slow progress down.
I welcome the development of a one stop shop for devs etc as the one thing Symbian is missing is a good app store..
Ovi store failed to protect developer’s app. Any paid App on Ovi can be hacked in few minutes and can be floated on torrents/shareware for free. Why should devloper use Ovi. Their own protection mechanism is much stronger than Ovi.
For last 2 months we developers only hear tat ovi team is working on that (and I believe so) but until they come up with a solution no go to Ovi for publishing app.
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