Developing for Series 60 Platform

Series 60 was originally designed for one-hand-operated smartphones; based around a large color screen and an intuitive user interface (UI). By using standard technologies and open standards it ensures interoperability between different terminal and infrastructure manufacturers. Besides Nokia Mobile Phones, many other major terminal manufacturers are using Series 60 Platform and Symbian OS under license to produce exciting new devices, including Siemens, Sendo, Samsung, and Panasonic (Matsushita).

Series 60 includes ready-to-run applications that hardware manufacturers can incorporate in their Series 60 devices. These applications illustrate the possibilities of the platform, but they also guide developers in designing software that complies with the user interface style. Some of the applications provide public APIs for accessing their services from other applications. For example, the Phonebook application has a service (view switching) for displaying a list of contacts; the Photo Album application has a service for finding images; and the Messages application has a service for sending emails.

Series 60 fully supports installing and running applications designed natively for Symbian OS. The installation file format used is the Symbian-specified " .sis " format. Applications can be downloaded via the browser, email, file transfer by IrDA or Bluetooth, or added via a PC connection through an IrDA or a Bluetooth connection.

The mobile phone device market is opening up for software application developers and content creators . Creating an application, downloading it to a phone, and connecting it to the world provides a new business opportunity for the software industry. Investing in a standards-based platform, which enables deployment of the same software on different types of phones and communicators , is a priority for software companies. Series 60 has been designed to ensure a safe investment in creating applications for this new mobile software market.

Developers have the freedom to create applications for a single platform available on phones from multiple manufacturers in a larger unified application market. More applications lead to greater platform adoption, which in turn leads to more devices, thus enlarging the market for everyone.

Forecasts, from several trusted industry sources, predict that during 2007, around 200 million smartphones will be shipped to customers ”and by then the total number of Symbian OS based devices in use will be about 500 million. It is expected that Symbian OS will have by far the largest market share in smartphone Operating Systems.

Developing applications for a platform that originates from mobile technology and Internet standards facilitates interoperability. Freedom to create products and services for mobile phones by using, C++, Java ^TM , multimedia messaging, and other popular technologies opens up new markets, such as entertainment and multimedia, and extends existing market opportunities into areas such as handset to corporate back-end system connectivity.