After so many years of hoping and wishing, developers can start getting excited about coding for the Symbian platform. Sure, it’s taken a while and some might be looking forward to Maemo 6 later this year far more than a newer version of Symbian, but opening up the source code to the world’s largest operating system is nothing to sneeze at. The Symbian operating system is aging and hasn’t changed dramatically over the last several years and this is exactly what the platform needs for a major facelift.
The Symbian Foundation has already set up a page full of resources for developers who want to build apps for the platform. There are videos, code examples, books, tutorials and forums to foster a strong development community. So if you’re a developer looking to jump into making mobile apps, or expanding on what you might have done for Android, iPhone OS or webOS, you may feel right at home with Symbian.
We’re sure it’s not going to take a lot of convincing if you’re familiar with the platform, but here are some fun facts that Symbian decided to put up:
- As of February 2010, the number of cumulative shipments of Symbian devices equates to one for every person living in the United States (with some to spare).
- As of February 2010, if every Symbian device shipped was laid end to end, the chain of phones would stretch around the circumference of the earth.
- If all the Symbian devices shipped up to February 2010 were laid flat on an average UK Premiership football pitch, it would be filled to a depth of 3.5 metres.
Now you really can’t say that there won’t be much exposure for your apps!
[Symbian via PhoneScoop]