What is it?
According to figures from industry analyst
Canalys, the
Symbian
operating system had 65% of the "converged device" market -
smartphones and wireless handhelds - in 2007. This still isn't an
enormous market. According to the Symbian company's own figures,
200 million Symbian-equipped devices have been sold over the
years.
If another of the company's figures is correct, users of these
devices are among the most pampered in the world: there are
supposed to be four million developers working on applications for
the Symbian platform, one for every 50 customers, with 10,000
mobile applications available.
Nokia is in the process of acquiring all the shares in Symbian
Ltd it doesn't already own. In June, with other leading mobile
telecoms manufacturers from around the world, Nokia announced the
Symbian Foundation. This will unite the various Symbian
software platforms, including Nokia's S60, UIQ from Sony Ericsson,
Motorola and others, and NTT Docomo's Mobile Oriented Applications
Platform MOAP in a single, "open" mobile software platform.
The Foundation will offer a royalty-free Symbian licence, and
has borrowed other approaches from the open source world. Some
components are already available as open source products, and the
intention is to provide "the most complete mobile software offering
available in open source" within two years.
But in the meantime, acquiring Symbian skills and developing
Symbian applications is an expensive business. Those skills are,
however, well rewarded.
Where did it originate?
Symbian originated with Psion's EPOC operating system in the
1980s. The Symbian platform is now 10 years old: Symbian Ltd was
formed as a partnership between Psion, Ericsson, Nokia and Motorola
in 1998. The newly formed Symbian Foundation's board members
include AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DOCOMO,
Samsung Electronics, Sony Ericsson, STM, Texas Instruments and
Vodafone.
What is it for?
The Symbian OS is optimised to provide real-time services from
limited resources. Symbian Software Developer Kits (SDKs) are
available for C++ - the dominant language on the platform - and
Java other languages such as Python are also used. Development
takes the Model-View-Controller approach.
Best known and most widely used of toolsets is Nokia's
Carbide.c++, based on the Eclipse initiative, of which Nokia is a
member along with founder IBM.
There are different SDKs for the different user interface
platforms, which, as well as look and feel, have their own sets of
system applications for messaging, browsing, telephony and contact
and calendar management.
How difficult is it to master?
Even experienced C++ developers will take time to adjust to some
of the quirks of programming for the Symbian OS. Carbide.c++ is
structured to guide developers though the steps required to write
and deploy Symbian applications. Symbian also publishes
downloadable reference applications and utilities written by its
own engineers in C++ or Java, with full source code.
Where is it used?
The five leading handset manufacturers and biggest mobile
networks worldwide all support Symbian.
What systems does it run on?
Most Symbian development is actually done under Microsoft
Windows: when you download the SDK, you get documentation, and
software which emulates Symbian on the PC. There are also plug-ins
for Visual Studio, and Sun's Java Wireless Toolkit for Java Micro
Edition.
Rates of pay
Junior C++ Symbian developers from £30,000 senior developers
£40,000-£55,000.
Training
Downloads and other resources can be found here.
For details of training courses - some of the most expensive in the
IT business - see here.