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Media Developer Roundtable
kevinSharp | 21 September, 2010 01:38

One last dispatch from Richard Bloor who made good use of his long flights home:

The media developer roundtable at Nokia Developer Summit brought together representatives from Pixelpipe Inc., Qik Inc., Shazam Entertainment Ltd, Teleca AB, and Tunewiki Inc. to share their experiences of developing and distributing Symbian apps for Nokia devices.

Bringing together an eclectic mix of mobile developers from the US, Middle East and Europe, the roundtable resulted in a wide ranging discussion. Although all the developer’s apps address different user needs, their experiences of working with Nokia had many common themes:

For all the developers, the global reach of Ovi Store is a significant advantage of doing business with Nokia. Alex Musil, VP product marketing at Shazam Entertainment highlighted that this reach sees the Shazam app in use in about 200 countries and “that far exceeds any other platform in terms of the reach”. Brett Butterfield, founder and CEO at Pixelpipe noted their application even has one user in the Congo (along with many more in 196 countries).
The reach of Ovi store reduces the need to work with multiple application stores. Rani Coh, Founder and CEO, Tunewiki commented that they don’t use any other app stores to target Nokia users, saying this was appreciated as “we don’t waste resource now trying to run after many channels”.
Markku Holstrom of Teleca also noted that, while much of the media coverage focuses on app stores for the US and Europe, Teleca is doing a lot of work on applications for other markets (which Holstrom noted are “huge markets that are growing the fastest”). In these markets, Ovi Store is almost the only channel available.
Carrier billing was an essential component of this reach. All the developers reported that operator billing provides an order of magnitude greater sales compared to credit card. According to Scott Jensen, product marketing for Ovi Store, overall it’s 13 time higher.
While the fixed revenue share on operator billing (now set at 60/40) was welcome by most, Coh (Tunewiki) pointed out that developers who have fixed costs (such as royalties, as is the case for Tunewiki) getting all revenue to a 70/30 split was important.
Qt is a genuine time saver when developing Symbian app. Bob Rosin, EVP business development and corporate development at Qik, said he checked the claims with one of his developers: This developer is usually not shy about pointing out the faults in a tool, but when Rosin asked if it is “true this will save half the development time” the reply was a simple “yep”.
Similarly Holstrom (Teleca) continued that Qt was living up to its promise of being easier to learn. This means that development for Symbian can be learnt quickly by developers. So, despite Teleca having some 500 Symbian experts, Holstrom described himself as “excited” about the development potential unlocked by Qt.
Fragmentation, while Holstrom (Teleca) said there is a need to tailor application to the different device form factors (QWERTY keyboard vs. ITU keypad for example) the fragmentation in the underlying application is minimal on Symbian. Butterfield (Pixelpipe) commented that, compared to other platforms they develop for, the fragmentation in Symbian was “nothing”.
An interesting point made by Coh (Tunewiki) is that, unlike any other company they work with, Nokia provides them with a single person as their contact point. And this person does not simply support them technically but helps find new opportunities, such a preloading or advertising, which is “really a huge support to find revenue streams, which we could not have uncovered ourselves”. Musil (Shazam) also noted that their contact person seemed to know everyone in Nokia and provided a “very positive experience”.

While many aspects of working for Nokia were praised by the developers, when asked what improvements Nokia could be make:

Musil (Shazam) wants to see downloaded applications shown on a device’s home screen or main menu page, not buried in the applications folder. (Jensen [Ovi] noted that this feature is coming).
Butterfield (Pixelpipe) would appreciate the ability to communicate with those who provided negative feedback in Ovi reviews, either to let them know issues have been addressed or to get more information so the issues can be fixed.
Rosin (Qik) wishes to see operator billing in more markets and for more operators. (Nokia has carrier billing agreements with 91 operators in 27 markets).
Coh (Tunewiki) wants a more transparent way to use a third-party app without leaving the Tunewiki app.

While Nokia had clearly picked a selection of developers who would provide a positive picture of developing for Symbian, the balance of comments suggested the positive feedback reflected a genuinely positive appreciation of the opportunities: Something of a contrast to the perspective more commonly seen in the tech media.