The Symbian Foundation has announced the launch of the Symbian Horizon publishing program. Developers can sign up to have their applications listed in the Symbian Horizon Directory, processed through Symbian Signed, and published to a growing list of application store partners. According to the organization, Symbian Horizon is designed to help developers cost-effectively bring their applications to the largest mobile market in the world. The publishing program is now being scaled up to process thousands of applications in 2010.

The foundation says that Horizon demonstrates Symbian’s commitment to improving the developer experience, including helping developers build applications, place them in a variety of global stores, and provide marketing support. Also, the foundation says it created the program in response to developer concerns that there were too many challenges and costs associated with developing and publishing a Symbian application to the global market. In addition to reducing these costs, the foundation seeks to improve developers’ access to global markets through translation and localization assistance.

Since Horizon’s launch plans were announced in July, Symbian has processed an initial group of 50 applications and is helping these developers sign and submit their products to mobile application stores worldwide. Five stores now support Horizon: Nokia’s Ovi Store, the Samsung Applications Store, AT&T’s MEdia Mall, China Mobile’s Mobile Market, and Sony Ericsson’s PlayNow arena.

“The diversity of application stores in our ecosystem increases the burden on developers by requiring multiple submission and review processes,” says Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation. “But this diversity can also offer an advantage over competitors’ closed systems, where applications sometimes receive arbitrary or commercially motivated rejections. Symbian Horizon retains this advantage while reducing the burden by becoming a conduit to multiple stores, helping developers reach the largest global market in the world more efficiently.” 

Developers will be able to participate in the program in three ways. First, all developers can have their Symbian Signed applications appear in the Symbian Horizon Directory free of charge. The directory is designed to provide a complete guide to every Symbian Signed application as well as where they can be downloaded or purchased. It is live in beta, showcasing an initial group of applications and allowing developers to submit other applications that have already been signed.

Second, the Symbian Signed process will be revised over the next few months, giving developers the option of automatically adding an application to the Symbian Horizon Directory. Developers will be able to register online and edit their application and developer profiles, providing stores and consumers alike complete information about their products.

Finally, Symbian Horizon will begin to increase the number of applications processed through Symbian Signed and submitted to application store partners over the next few months. In addition to the first group of 50 applications, another 50 will be processed through the review and signing process and submitted to all participating stores at no cost to the developer. A comprehensive program designed to process thousands of applications will be launched in 2010.

The foundation has analyzed the costs of processing these applications and says that the program will require a significant investment. Over the next few months, it will host an “open conversation” at ideas.symbian.org to explore funding options. According to the group, funding is a critical issue, and the solution ultimately will depend upon collaboration with many contributors, including existing members, application stores, and the developers themselves. The plans for this program will be developed jointly with input from all of these constituents.