Symbian looks to integrate stores in virtual shopping mall

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Symbian looks to integrate stores in virtual shopping mall

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 20 February, 2009

READ MORE: Symbian

Application stores were a hot feature of Mobile World Congress, but the market is becoming extremely full, with the risk of confusing end users and fragmenting the mobile web still further. Nokia's Ovi store managed to steal most of the limelight from other launches from Samsung and Microsoft, and T-Mobile rode on its coat-tails by announcing integration of its software platform with Nokia's. Then, to muddy the waters further, the Symbian Foundation announced plans for its own app store, which would be directly competitive with the other open source, cross-device major, Android Market; and Orange beefed up its own offering.

All this raises the confusing prospect of a consumer on a Nokia phone being able to buy software from Nokia's own Ovi store, a future Symbian store, or from the carrier with which the device is running.

However, the Symbian Foundation, into which Nokia placed its mobile operating system when it made it open source, is looking to bring a measure of integration, a goal shared with Adobe and others. It says it will not only have a virtual storefront for its applications - seeking some of the success of the prototype for them all, Apple's App Store - but will try to create a 'store of stores', allowing operators to integrate their own offerings to create a sort of virtual 'shopping mall'.

Lee Williams, executive director of the Foundation and former head of Nokia's Series 60 division, said the offering should be ready late this year. "Our role is to provide an inventory and a place for developers to go," Williams said. "It will enable operators to have a really rich store front", and avoid the return to the 'walled garden', represented by App Store and rivals from Microsoft, RIM and Palm.

The Foundation expects to employ around 200 people by the end of this year, and plans to unveil its new brand at CTIA this year. It is now operating entirely separately from the 'old Symbian' which is owned by Nokia, although about half of its management team, now almost in place, will come from that organization. The first distribution of new Symbian code will appear on April 2, and the second in late May, with updates after that on a six-monthly cycle.

Meanwhile, Orange enhanced its own Application Shop to try to attract new users to the mobile web. It can now recommend simply widgets via a shop icon embedded on the device.

"Instead of browsing through thousands and thousands of applications, Orange can push simple services like local news, weather, sports and horoscopes to customers who are normally anxious about using mobile data," said Yves Maitre, senior VP of devices, aiming to target the "long tail" of mobile broadband, or the 90% of phone users who do not go online.