China Mobile Communications Corporation (CMCC), the world’s largest mobile network operator, and the Symbian Foundation have agreed to collaborate on a series of key initiatives to improve the mobile ecosystem in China and also to stimulate the development of the market for CCMC’s locally developed 3G network standard, TD-SCDMA. The partnership also marks Symbian’s Chinese website launch, its broader focus on the Chinese market and China Mobile’s determination to support the Symbian Foundation.
The first partnership initiative will be to simplify Symbian Signed testing services for developers submitting applications to CMCC’s newly launched application store, Mobile Market. The inclusion of Symbian Signed services will allow CMCC to provide mobile developers with a one-stop facility for testing, signing and publishing their Symbian-based applications. Currently, more than 50% of Mobile Market’s 2,000 applications are based on the Symbian platform. Mobile Market will also support applications published via Symbian’s new application publishing programme, Horizon.
Symbian has guaranteed its support for CMCC’s plans to strengthen its TD-SCDMA 3G network, and to facilitate the Symbian ecosystem in its development of Symbian-based TD-SCDMA devices that will “bring the benefits of a 3G network to the operator’s millions of subscribers in the future.”
Alongside this new partnership, Symbian recently launched a Chinese version of its website to promote and support the adoption of the Symbian platform in the region. The foundation has also laid out plans to establish an office and local operation in Beijing, further demonstrating Symbian’s growing investment in China.
* China Mobile provides mobile voice and data services as well as other related services in all 31 provinces, autonomous regions and directly-administered municipalities in mainland China. In addition, it is one of the major mobile telecoms operators in Hong Kong. As of July 31, 2009, the number of users reached approximately 497 million, ranking number one in the world.
** The Symbian Foundation is an independent, non-profit organisation whose mission is to enable an open ecosystem that will help create the most complete and richest user experiences for mobile devices. Symbian maintains the code for an open source software platform based on Symbian OS and software assets contributed by Nokia, NTT DOCOMO, and Sony Ericsson, including the S60 and MOAP(S) user interfaces. Portions of the platform's source code have already been moved to open source, under the Eclipse Public License. By mid-2010 this process will be complete, making the platform code available to all for free. Symbian's board of directors comprises: AT&T Mobility, Nokia, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, ST Microelectronics, Texas Instruments, and Vodafone. Symbian has offices in the UK, USA, Japan, and Finland, and will soon have a regional operation in China (Beijing).
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