In addition, Nitobi has contributed PhoneGap to Symbian, which is included in the 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.

“PhoneGap is committed to giving mobile web developers the ability to design fun, engaging and useful device-independent applications by using open standards,” commented Andre Charland, CEO of Nitobi. “We have had a long standing relationship with members of the Symbian community and are thrilled to be working directly with this like minded organization to provide developers worldwide an easier way to tap in to the power of Symbian.”

“The Symbian OS brought smartphones to the mainstream and powers among the most advanced devices on the global market,” said Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager, Nuance Mobile. “We expect that the adoption of Series 60 phones from Nokia, Samsung, LG and others is going to rapidly expand over the next few years. This proliferation of Symbian’s open source platform provides Nuance with an exciting opportunity to bring our innovative speech, predictive text and handwriting solutions to an increasingly pervasive mobile platform base around the world.”

Nuance’s broad portfolio of speech and predictive text solutions are already available for many Symbian Series 60 devices around the world, including XT9, T9 Nav, and TALKS&ZOOMS.

Indeed, the foundation has became more powerful. Three months ago, they announced that their intent to unite Symbian OS, S60, UIQ and MOAP to create one open mobile software platform. According to Symbian, the foundation’s platform will build on the leading mobile software platform, with more than 200 million phones, across 235 models.

Of course, this move is a kind of anticipating Google Inc’s Android’s challenge over who will dominate mobile phone software market in coming years.

[via Topix.net]

To enable the Foundation, Nokia today announced plans to acquire the remaining shares of Symbian Limited and then contribute the Symbian and S60 software to the Foundation. Sony Ericsson and Motorola today announced their intention to contribute technology from UIQ and DOCOMO has also indicated its willingness to contribute its MOAP(S) assets. From these contributions, the Foundation will provide a unified platform with common UI framework. A full platform will be available for all Foundation members under a royalty-free license, from the Foundation’s first day of operations.

Contributions from Foundation members through open collaboration will be integrated to further enhance the platform. The Foundation will make selected components available as open source at launch. It will then work to establish the most complete mobile software offering available in open source. This will be made available over the next two years and is intended to be released under Eclipse Public License (EPL) 1.0.

The Foundation is expected to start operating during the first half of 2009, subject to the closing of the acquisition of Symbian Ltd by Nokia.