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Symbian Signed drives mobile applications market
Symbian Signed increases developer opportunities through wider
market exposure, cheaper and easier application signing process
London, U.K., 18th May 2004 – Symbian Limited announced
today the formal launch of Symbian Signed, the industry-endorsed
application signing program that promotes best practise in Symbian
OS content and application development. The program tests applications
against industry-agreed criteria in support of network operator
and mobile manufacturer requirements. Symbian Signed is designed
to satisfy mobile developers’ needs and ensures a thriving,
open market for trusted mobile applications by providing a single,
low-cost and unified certification program. The program also delivers
developer authentication and anti-tamper security for Symbian OS
applications. More than 300 Symbian native C++ and Visual Basic
application and their associated content have reached Symbian Signed
status.
“With 12 million Symbian OS phones already in the market and
Symbian OS phone sales rising more than 100% year-on-year in the
last quarter, Symbian developers are creating third party applications
at an increasingly rapid rate. Symbian Signed builds on Symbian’s
existing support for application developers by creating even wider
commercial opportunities for applications and faster routes to market
that require less cost and effort,” said Simon Garth, vice
president, market development, Symbian.
Operators, application publishers and phone makers currently offer
individual certification schemes resulting in extra cost for the
industry and a more complex route to market for application developers.
Symbian Signed provides a single signing scheme that can be used
as an alternative to many of the individual schemes, reducing the
cost and complexity of getting applications to market. As a result,
handset manufacturers such as Nokia, Sendo and Sony Ericsson have
today announced that they will be migrating their own signing programs
to Symbian Signed.
Flexible Symbian Signed options
Symbian Signed offers flexible signing options to support the different
needs of the Symbian OS ecosystem. These options are:
Test House Certification: Suitable for ISVs with a
small number of applications. Applications are submitted to the
Symbian Signed portal and tested by an independent third party test
house
Self Certification: Suitable for ISVs with more than
15 of their own applications that require Symbian Signed status.
ISVs or network operators certify their own applications through
the re-use of internal, recognised Quality Assurance processes
Publisher Certification: Suitable for application
publishers, Symbian OS licensees and network operators or any public
software distribution portal owner. The publisher tests and certifies
the application using its own quality assurance processes on behalf
of the originating ISV
Powerful channel to market
Symbian Signed also supports a distribution channel for Symbian
OS application developers, providing a powerful route to market
with the main application vendors and distributors. Developers who
achieve Symbian Signed will also be provided with rights to use
the ‘For Symbian OS’ logo.
Industry endorsed programme
Symbian worked with key developers, phone manufacturers, network
operators and system integrators to develop Symbian Signed before
undertaking an extended beta phase through 2003 and the early part
of 2004
[http://www.symbian.com/press-office/2004/pr040223d.html].
The program is delivered with industry leading partners that have
provided an automated and seamlessly integrated process. Cidercone
Wireless Oy provides the intuitive and easy to navigate Symbian
Signed portal website, Capgemini offers testing services for the
independent test house route and Verisign offers Authenticated Content
Signing (ACS) services, providing a means for the validation and
acceptance of applications.
Richard Hanscott, vice president, business development and partnering,
Orange Group said:
"The rapidly increasing number of Symbian OS phones in the
market is creating a significant opportunity for the industry. Symbian
Signed not only supports the needs of operators and customers but
also delivers an accelerated route to market for Orange developers."
Harald Stadlbauer, vice president partner development and corporate
venturing, T-Mobile, said:
"T-Mobile is pleased to support the aims of the Symbian Signed
Program. Such initiatives are essential for the short and long term
satisfaction of our customers and the mobile industry and therefore
T-Mobile will seek to work closely with the industry to facilitate
such activities. T-Mobile will be encouraging vendors and developers
to adopt high quality standards for their applications."
Andrey Scherbakov, development director, Epocware said:
"We are excited to be involved in Symbian Signed as it provides
a consistent criteria and process to greatly simplify how we certify
applications across all Symbian OS phones.”
Clint Patterson, vice president of marketing, Handango said:
"We are pleased to offer Symbian Signed to our software partners
as part of our rich service offering. This innovative industry-endorsed
program meets the market’s growing demand for certified applications.
In support of Symbian Signed, we will offer preferential positioning
to applications on our own download portals starting this summer."
Simon Jacobs, director of Xen Games Ltd said:
"Symbian Signed worked exactly as I would expect it to. There
is nothing more I could suggest to improve the process. Symbian
Signed will offer Xen Games Ltd a powerful route to market."
Lee Epting, vice president, Forum Nokia said:
"Nokia fully supports Symbian’s initiative and recommends
Symbian Signed throughout Forum Nokia, our 1.4 million member developer
community, and has begun the process of migrating Nokia’s application
testing program, Nokia OK, to Symbian Signed. As of July 1st 2004
only tested applications will be accepted into Nokia channels.”
Hugh Brogan, CEO, Sendo, said:
"Sendo’s end user and operator customers will benefit
greatly from a choice of high quality, tested Symbian Signed applications.
We support Symbian's simple standardized scheme and will encourage
the developer community to support this initiative by migrating
Sendo Check, Sendo’s own certification program, to Symbian
Signed and will include the Symbian root certificate in our Symbian
OS/Series 60 devices."
Anders Unosson, vice president applications & services mobile
phones, Siemens Information and Communication Mobile Group, said:
"With its industry-wide support Symbian Signed will foster
quality and best practice in the creation of applications for Symbian
OS phones. The program delivers a solution to the real market requirement
of industry wide testing and certification and also offers a more
direct route to market for developers."
Ulf Wretling, director developer program, Sony Ericsson said:
"Sony Ericsson sees the Symbian Signed Program as a vital component
to mature the market perception of Symbian OS as the premier choice
for advanced phones. By making it easy and straightforward for developers
to certify their applications, this effort will build a strong portfolio
of trusted Symbian OS applications for our customers to enjoy. From
January 1 2005, all new Symbian applications on Sony Ericsson portals
will be required to be Symbian Signed.”
Mal Postings, global mobility lead, Capgemini, said:
“Symbian Signed is exactly what is needed to ensure that more
high quality applications enter the market place. It is not only
about offering cost effective testing services, but ensuring that
developers have access to testing houses that understand the context
of mobile applications and are able to master the technology complexities
of the mobile user experience.”
Garry McCollum, CEO of Cibenix said:
"Cibenix is delighted to see the introduction of an efficient
and flexible signing program from Symbian. This program allows us
to signal the high quality and professional implementation of our
operator and consumer product range across the broad array of Symbian
OS phones available today."
Chad Kinzelberg, vice president, SSL, VeriSign said:
“VeriSign is excited to be working with Symbian in creating
a safe and secure environment for deploying wireless applications
and content. Symbian Signed allows wireless carriers to operate
with the confidence that their network infrastructure is protected
while ensuring their application development and distribution is
never disrupted.”
About Symbian Signed
Symbian Signed is the mobile industry endorsed certification program
that promotes best practise in designing applications to run on
Symbian OS phones. Symbian Signed applications follow industry agreed
quality guidelines and support network operator requirements for
applications and content. The program was created to satisfy the
mobile industry’s demand for reduced fragmentation and cost
to developers by providing the community with a single generic certification
program that all parties can benefit from. For more information
please visit www.symbiansigned.com or email symbiansigned@symbian.com
- Ends -
About Symbian Ltd
Symbian is a software licensing company that develops and licenses
Symbian OS, the global open industry standard operating system for
advanced, data-enabled mobile phones.
Symbian licenses Symbian OS to the world’s leading handset
manufacturers. The following Symbian OS licensees have manufactured
and announced Symbian OS-based mobile phones: Arima, BenQ, Fujitsu
for NTT DoCoMo FOMA, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Sendo, Siemens,
Samsung and Sony Ericsson. In 2003, over 6.67 million Symbian OS-based
mobile phones were sold worldwide and ten million were sold overall
to date.
Symbian has its headquarters in London, United Kingdom with offices
in the US, Europe and Asia. For further information about Symbian
and Symbian’s annual trade show this year, Exposium04 -The
Smartphone Show - please see www.symbian.com or email press@symbian.com.
Press contacts
Cibenix Mike Brady - michael.brady@cibenix.com
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