China Mobile Signs Cooperation Agreement with the Symbian Foundation

­China Mobile Communications Corporation (CMCC), the state owned parent company to China Mobile has announced that it is to collaborate with the Symbian Foundation on a series of initiatives to improve the mobile ecosystem in China and to stimulate the development of the market for the home-developed TD-SCDMA standard. The partnership also marks Symbian's Chinese website launch, broader focus on the Chinese market and China Mobile's determination to support the Symbian Foundation.

The first partnership initiative is the simplification of Symbian Signed testing services for developers submitting applications to CMCC's newly launched application store, Mobile Market. Currently, more than 50% of Mobile Market's 2,000 applications are based on the Symbian platform. Mobile Market will also support applications published via Symbian's new application publishing programme, Horizon.

"The Symbian platform holds a strong position in China's mobile market and we welcome the opportunity to build our relationship with the Symbian Foundation," commented Lu Xiang Dong, Vice President at China Mobile. "By entering this partnership with the foundation we hope to have greater involvement in the development of new and exciting mobile applications, thereby enabling developers to satisfy consumers' 3G requirements via our Mobile Market store and enhancing the value chain for the TD-SCDMA industry."

The foundation has also laid out plans to establish an office and local operation in Beijing.

Prior to the launch of Symbian's Chinese website, more registrants and visitors to its English language developer site came from China than from any other country. Registrants from the US and India rank second and third respectively.

Posted to the site on 9th September 2009