Symbian to get Visual Basic support
In February, Nokia and AppForge announced a deal to bring a Symbian-compatible version of the software to market, and the first beta version of the software is due by the end of March. A public beta is scheduled for April, and a new version of AppForge including Symbian support is to arrive in June.
Symbian OS has been around for several years in the form of EPOC, which was previously used in handheld devices from the U.K.'s Psion, but the release of a Symbian-compatible AppForge may be a sign of increasing developer interest in the platform.
AppForge allows the large pool of Visual Basic developers to quickly create applications for mobile and wireless devices, including Palm and Pocket PC handheld computers. The company claims that with Symbian support, AppForge software will run on 90 percent of all PDA devices shipping today.
In the first half of this yea, the Symbian OS will make its debut in the U.S. market in the form of the Nokia 9290 Communicator--which could stoke the interest of U.S.-based developers. AppForge claims that there are more than 50,000 AppForge developers in large organizations such as Pfizer, Honeywell and Bell Canada. Nokia hopes that such companies will use AppForge to port existing enterprise applications to its device.
"By cutting the time to deploy existing mobile applications on Communicators, we'll anticipate greater productivity in development teams," said Lee Wright, head of Nokia's American developer program, when the new AppForge was announced.
Symbian is promoting its operating system for a wide variety of devices, but take-up has been sluggish because of slower-than-expected growth in the smart phone market. Nokia and Ericsson currently make Symbian smart phones, and other manufacturers such as Samsung have recently announced plans to join in.
Microsoft is heavily promoting its own Windows Powered Smartphone 2002 software, which will make its debut in the U.S. and the U.K. later this year.