Symbian Signed beta trial gathers strong industry support

3GSM World Congress, Cannes, France – 23 February 2004 – Symbian Limited is pleased to announce growing support for Symbian Signed. Symbian Signed is an industry-wide initiative led by Symbian that meets the market need for a generic mobile application certification program for Symbian OS applications. Symbian Signed is in its final stages of beta testing and is anticipated to launch later this year.

Marit Døving, Executive Vice President, Marketing, Symbian:
"Symbian is delighted with the progress of the development of Symbian Signed. We have worked with the close support and co-operation of network operators, handset manufacturers, tools vendors, application resellers and - of course - Symbian OS application developers from across the industry to develop Symbian Signed. As a result Symbian Signed aims to provide a market-leading certification program that the whole mobile industry can endorse. We're very much looking forward to Symbian Signed being made available to the wider developer community."

Paul Amery, Partner Strategy Manager at Orange said:
"As one of the World’s largest mobile communications companies, our primary objective is to provide our customers with the optimum user experience. We see Symbian Signed supporting this goal by ensuring applications are from a trusted source and meet defined test criteria. Symbian Signed not only supports the needs of operators and customers but also delivers an accelerated route to market for developers.”

Randy Eisenman, President and CEO of Handango said:
"Symbian's consultative approach with Handango will facilitate a smooth transition of Symbian Signed applications to our catalog. We anticipate that signed applications will increasingly receive preferential placement on the portals that we provide to major operator and device manufacturers.”

Tuomo Telkkä, R&D director of Anygraaf said:
"We have been with various signing programs in the past, but Symbian Signed is in a class of its own when it comes to speed and simplicity. The testing process is both easy to understand and follow. It is a great advantage to be able to assure customers that our applications will work fully with their Symbian device.”

Andrey Scherbakov, Development Director at 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 devices.”

Garry McCollum, CEO of Cibenix said:
"Cibenix are delighted to see the introduction of an efficient and flexible certification 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 powered devices on offer today.” 

Simon Jacobs, Director of Xen Games Ltd said:
"Symbian Signed worked exactly as I would expect it to do. There is nothing I could suggest to improve the process. Symbian Signed will offer Xen Games Ltd a powerful route to market.”

Hugh Brogan, CEO at Sendo said:
" Sendo fully supports the launch of this structured, standardized application signing program. Our end user and operator customers will benefit from the availability of high quality, tested applications. We support Symbian's initiative to structure the testing and signing procedure thus safeguarding a simple standardized scheme and we would like to encourage the developer community to support this initiative. Sendo will include the Symbian root certificate in our Symbian/Series 60 devices.”

Lee Epting, vice president, Forum Nokia said:
"For Symbian application developers, Symbian Signed should be the last step before taking their application to the market. For the operators and application resellers, Symbian Signed should be the first requirement when evaluating a Symbian application. Nokia will recommend Symbian Signed throughout Forum Nokia, our 1.3 million member developer community, to assure the best possible visibility to developers.” 

Ulf Wretling, Director Developer Program, Sony Ericsson said:
"Sony Ericsson sees Symbian Signed as a vital component to mature the market perception of the Symbian OS platform as the premier choice for advanced phones. By making it easy and straight-forward for developers to certify their applications this effort will build a strong portfolio of trusted Symbian OS applications for our customers to enjoy.” 

Anders Unosson, VP Applications & Services, Siemens 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. Siemens are very pleased to support Symbian Signed.”

Application developers wishing to participate in the final stages of beta testing should email   symbiansigned @symbian.com

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 mobile phone manufacturers including Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Siemens and Sony Ericsson. Publicly announced products based on Symbian OS include the BenQ P30, Motorola A920 and A925 for 3, Sendo X, Siemens SX-1, NTT DoCoMo FOMA F900i, F2102V and F2051 built by Fujitsu, Sony Ericsson P800 and P900 Smartphones, Nokia 9200 Communicator range as well as the 7700, 7650, 6600, 6620, 3650/3600, 3660/3620 and N-Gage.

Media Enquiries

Anatolie Papas Laura Sykes Symbian Software Limited press@symbian.com