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In a move to help make it easier for developers to create mobile applications for any device, the Symbian Foundation and Nitobi have joined forces.
Symbian and Nitobi, “creators of the ground-breaking PhoneGap mobile application development framework, [July 21] announced an open-source collaboration,” the joint statement said. The two organizations are “integrating Symbian’s Web application creation tools and Nitobi’s PhoneGap ‘write once, run anywhere’ platform” to enable developers to build “app-store-ready applications for all major mobile platforms.”
Symbian and Nitobi announced the partnership at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, Ore.
PhoneGap is “an open-source development tool for building fast, easy, cross-platform mobile apps with HTML and JavaScript that still take advantage of the core features in the iPhone, Google, Android, Palm, Symbian and BlackBerry SDKs [software development kits],” Nitobi said.
“PhoneGap is committed to giving mobile Web developers the ability to design fun, engaging and useful device-independent applications by using open standards,” Nitobi CEO Andre Charland said in a statement. “We have had a longstanding relationship with members of the Symbian community and are thrilled to be working directly with this likeminded organization to provide developers worldwide an easier way to tap into the power of Symbian.”
Moreover, the joint statement said, “Nitobi has contributed PhoneGap to Symbian, which [has] included [the PhoneGap technology] in the Symbian 3 platform Web extensions package. With both of these developments in place, any Web developer who knows HTML, CSS and JavaScript can now write a mobile application once and deploy it across multiple operating systems and devices. In addition, developers can access native device capabilities such as telephony, contacts, camera, accelerometers, orientation and location that can be modified or enhanced to improve the end-user experience and device functionality.”
“This is a great partnership that will benefit app developers across the globe. For the thousands of apps that have been built using PhoneGap, developers now have the option of developing one app which will run across all platforms, including Symbian,” Lee Williams, executive director of Symbian, said in a statement. “At the same time, our Web tools allow developers on other platforms to quickly build apps for Symbian and access the world’s largest smartphone market.”
The tools can be accessed here.