Symbian's Horizon: one app store to rule them all?

Mobile app stores are quickly approach "a dime a dozen" status -- they're proliferating among carriers, manufacturers, and platform vendors alike, which is a recipe for consumer confusion and developer discontent. The Symbian Foundation appears to see that writing on the wall, though, introducing its Horizon initiative which seeks to help guide developers through the process and publish good apps to as many different app stores as it takes. Horizon appears to be a complete publishing solution; devs don't even need to necessarily have a completed product to start working with it, all you need is a good idea and Symbian claims it'll be ready and willing to hear you out. To quote the Foundation, "We want every Symbian app to be available online and on devices, through as many of the App Stores as possible," which sounds like a good strategy for a platform that's unquestionably being considered an underdog for the moment. Horizon's already open to signups to a limited number of developers, so put those thinking caps on -- you want to be ready for the Satio, don't you?

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 16th 2009 2:19PM]

Hi Chris, Not to be too picky, but Nokia released their results today, with details of their S60 smartphones. Their market share was UP, to 41% of all smartphones sold worldwide. Then there's Samsung and their Symbian phones. And so on. So around 50% market share for Symbian OS worldwide. Some 'underdog'! At least you put in the word 'considered', implying that it's the journalists and analysts who are missing a trick here....

[ndrwme Posted Jul 16th 2009 5:15PM]

This makes no sense. Nokia, which already has its own Ovi, owns Symbian but now Symbian is rolling out its own app store? And what does "as many of the App Stores as possible" mean? So Symbian's gonna help developers release apps on competing app stores?

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 17th 2009 8:37AM]

It's not another app store: this is a boost to the process for symbian developers to get their apps out there. From Symbian point of view, every single app store for symbian apps is relevant, whether it's Nokia's Ovi or Samsung's app store. The idea here, I think, is to help the old developers to focus on their main task and lure new ones...