China Mobile and the Symbian Foundation have inked a deal for cooperation on services for TD-SCDMA.

The first partnership initiative is the simplification of Symbian Signed testing services for developers submitting applications to China Mobile's newly launched application store, Mobile Market. The inclusion of Symbian Signed services will allow China Mobile to provide mobile developers with a one-stop facility for testing, signing and publishing their Symbian-based applications. 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.

Symbian has guaranteed its support for China Mobile's plans to strengthen its TD-SCDMA 3G network, and to facilitate the Symbian ecosystem in its development of Symbian-based TD-SCDMA devices that will bring the benefits of a 3G network to the operator's millions of subscribers in the future.

"China Mobile has played a leading role in the development of mobile communications, not just in China but also on an international scale and we look forward to having them share their expertise with the growing Symbian community," stated Lee Williams, Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation.