There’s no question in the mobile market that Symbian has lost major ground in the ecosystem in the last 3 years.’a0 Since Symbian was top dog (probably at the height of the N95’s success), the mobile web has sprung up and the top market share but mindshare losing mobile OS has failed to embrace it.’a0 That is, until recently.

Earlier this week, Symbian announced that it will embrace the open-source PhoneGap tool in the new Symbian^3 version of the mobile operating system.’a0 This will mean that developers can code on Symbian^3 utilizing standard tools such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

This will make Symbian a more friendly choice to mobile web developers who are looking to make the leap to writing mobile apps.’a0 Now, they’ll have the luxury of utilizing native functions such as geolocation, accelerometer data, camera, contacts, and network availability, all in an application framework that web developers are familiar with.

With 150,000 or so applications in the iTunes App Store and close to 100,000 apps in the Android market, Symbian needs to woo developers to it’s platform.’a0 Perhaps the new alliance and inclusion of PhoneGap tools will bring make Symbian a good choice going forward for application developers.