Symbian DevZone - Sendo’s Series 60 Developer Program


by Richard Bloor, April 7, 2003

Sendo, the newest addition to the Series 60 licensee family launched their developer program early this year. They have managed to create an Internet presence that has outdone a number of longer standing Series 60 licensees and this week we take a look at their program with their Developer Programme Manager, Sander van der Meer. - Printer Friendly Version


Sendo were the surprise addition to the Symbian community when late last year they jumped ship after what was a rather unproductive relationship with Microsoft. Despite the obvious setback of having to withdraw the Z100 when it was very close, possibly only days, from market Sendo have moved very aggressively and are the first of the Series 60 licensees, other than Nokia, to have a comprehensive Developer Program in place.

WDN recently took the opportunity to discuss Sendo’s developer program with Sander van der Meer their Developer Programme Manager.

WDN: Sendo had already put together a developer program to support the now abandoned Z100. Did this experience make creating the new program around Series 60 a straightforward task?

Sander: Not really. Having already had a program up and running did not make a huge difference to creating the Series 60 program. If you look at the developer programs being offered on the Internet you will see that they all have a very similar structure. Each program is however different because of its content, it is obviously this content that makes the program. For our Series 60 program developing the content was very much a case of going back to square one.

WDN: Did you learn anything from the previous developer program that allowed you to make the Series 60 based program a better program?

Sander: We have learned some lessons but not directly from the previous developer program. Before we put together the Series 60 program we benchmarked the other developer programs available. The goal was to find out where Sendo could fit in, what our niche could be, what weak points in those other programs we could address in ours. We believe we pinpointed some significant issues and have organized our program accordingly. In a nutshell we wanted our program to be unsurpassed in offering a straightforward way to find information very quickly, to get developing right away. So we have adopted a simple structure designed to ensure the developer can access information very easily and immediately start developing. We have received attention from several developer newsletters that have praised our approach and quality of the technical information offered, so we think we are getting it right.

WDN: Sendo had by all accounts already attracted considerable interest from developers working with Microsoft products. With the move to Series 60 are you doing anything specifically targeted at those developers to bring them over to Series 60 and your forthcoming phone?

Sander: We have not needed to do anything special, it simply was not necessary. When we announced we were going to use Series 60 we had a small percentage who withdrew from our existing community of several thousand developers. When we looked at why, we found that most of the developers already had multi platform strategies in place and were either developing or at least planning to develop for the Symbian OS. This interest in the Symbian OS was obviously something we were very please about.

WDN: One of the challenges for Sendo must be to differentiate your developer program from those of bigger players like Nokia, Siemens and possibly in the future Samsung and Panasonic, how are you addressing this challenge?

Sander: Firstly, we are not a small player any more. Look at our feature phones. We are taking 6% of the market in the Netherlands and 8% in Portugal so we are really becoming a player in some countries. And we are planning to become a significant player in the Smartphone market.

As you know any application written using the core Series 60 APIs will run on any other Series 60 phone so a developer using our program will be able to develop applications for any Series 60 phone. The freedom Series 60 provides for each manufacture to add on top of the core platform is something Sendo intends to take advantage of. Clearly one of the goals of our program will be designed to help developers tap into and make the best use of those Sendo specific features.

So our program is focusing on two aspects of Series 60 development, both the ability to create applications which will run on all Series 60 phones, but also helping developers take advantage of the special features of our phones.

WDN: What do you see as the compelling reasons why a Series 60 developer should use your developer program and ultimately build applications for Sendo's smartphone range rather than anyone else's?

Sander: Sendo's business model is based around our primary customers, the operator. We offer them full customization of the handsets and have an excellent relationship with these clients. Importantly we are able to help developers go to market, and that is one of the main driving forces behind the program. We are already talking to a number of developers about getting software onto our phone that we want as features embedded from day one.

Of course we are also going to have a great phone which developer will want to build applications for.

We certainly believe that developers who approach us will soon see that doing business with Sendo is a solid business decision for them to make.

WDN: So there may be more opportunity for developers because of your customization strategy?

Sander: Its all a matter of what our customers want in their customized handsets. Because customization is a strong focus of our strategy we can offer developers an opportunity to be involved perhaps more so than larger handset manufactures.

But we also want to contribute to the catalogue of software available for all Series 60 phones, not just ours. All Series 60 licensees benefit from the large catalogue of applications and we expect that developers in our program will help add to this catalogue. Then we are also hoping to provide them with ways to sell those applications to our customers, we are for example planning an on-line software shop.

WDN: Your program includes Sendo Check, a mechanism to assess the quality of developed applications and certify that quality. Nokia and Sony Ericsson recently announced that they would be working to unify their certification programs. Are there any plans to integrate Sendo Check into this?

Sander: The reason we created Sendo Check was to be able to assure the quality of applications which are going to be running on our phones, our operator client’s phones. We have a definition of the Sendo Check program, which is about 90 pages of test, to ensure our quality requirements. Whether we can integrate this program with others is something we need to look into, but as there are several unique specifications to the Sendo device we need to ensure that any joint program covers in it’s testing.

WDN: You are currently offering your Series 60 C++ SDK with support for development using MS VC++, are you planning to offer development options with Borland or Metrowerks tools in the future?

Sander: We see our program as a facilitator to get Series 60 applications to market. Each developer has a preferred IDE. We intend to listen to our developers and examine the feasibility of any development options where there is significant interest. We are already talking with Metrowerks and Borland as well as other companies that have their own IDEs, but all these discussions are in the early stages.

WDN: That sounds like a very proactive approach, is this something you are trying to apply to the whole program?

Sander: We very much want to make our program interactive. We believe that to be successful a developer program has to be something of a two way street. We would like to encourage developers to register at our site and then use the programs tools to make sure we know what they need to develop great applications. Sendo, together with our operator customers, wants to put together an exciting catalogue of applications. We want to help developers think about what the added value to the handset owner comes with this magical thing called a smartphone. I talk about this in the site’s section on our search for killer apps.

Ultimately we are very excited about the opportunities which Series 60 will offer to our developers and our clients. We believe it will be a great opportunity and hope that, in addition to being a commercial success, building applications with Sendo will be an enjoyable and fun thing to do.

Sendo perhaps have an easier job than other Series 60 licensees do in creating a clear and easy to use Developer Program as they are at present concentrating solely on Series 60 to deliver applications to their phones. However it is still not an easy job and the Sendo site is well laid out and clear. Ultimately the success of their program will really depend on two things, the quality of the phone they release and the ability to connect developers with operators seeking applications to differentiate their services in the increasingly competitive mobile market place. Certainly if the work they were doing around the Z100 can be taken as a indication the phone is likely to be a rich quality product and Sendo’s customization service is certainly going to be attractive to a number of operators. Sendo are planning to launch their first Series 60 phone before the end of the year.



About the WDN Symbian Editor, Richard Bloor:
Richard Bloor is a freelance writer and editor with 18 years experience in the IT industry as a developer, analyst and latterly Project Manager with a particularly focus on software testing. Richard has been involved with the Symbian OS since 1995 and has been writing about it for the last 3 years.

Richard is also an associate with System Architecture consultancy Equinox of Wellington, New Zealand.

Richard can be reached at symbian@wirelessdevnet.com.

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