Nokia Developer News

Nokia and China Telecom are bringing Lumia to China. Following the recent announcement of China as one of the 20+ new Windows Phone Marketplace countries, Nokia and China Telecom today announced the first CDMA Windows Phone in China, the Nokia 800C. A top priority of the Nokia Microsoft partnership has been introducing the Nokia Lumia range of smartphones to more markets around the world, especially China, the world’s largest smartphone market and a country we have been committed to for 26 years.

Wang Xiaochu, Chairman of China Telecom, expressed his enthusiasm for Nokia Lumia: ‘This grand launch for China's first CDMA Windows Phone represents our optimism and excitement for the future of Windows Phone and Nokia Lumia in China.’

The Nokia 800C is the first of our Lumia smartphones in China, and it offers head-turning design, best-in-class browsing via IE9 and the best localized social experience for China including Sina Weibo, QQ and Renren. Offered by China Telecom in black and cyan, the Nokia 800C features a reduced body design flowing seamlessly into the 3.7" AMOLED ClearBlack curved touchscreen display. With a 1.4 GHz processor, hardware acceleration and a separate graphics processor, it also features an instant-share 8 Mpx camera with exclusive Carl Zeiss optics, HD video playback, 16GB of internal user memory and SkyDrive storage for accessing pictures and files from anywhere.

This new phone also includes great built-in extras with China Telecom services, and core signature experiences from Nokia covering Maps, Drive and Music/Mix Radio.

As the world’s largest CDMA network operator, Nokia’s key partner China Telecom plays a central role in accelerating our speed in the CDMA market, and they provide great channel coverage to reach more people. Through joint innovation with leading local providers, Nokia is able to offer Lumia users access to all major Internet services in China including Sina, SOHU, Tencent and Renren. When paired with the choice of nearly 20,000 apps available for download through Marketplace, people using a Nokia Lumia smartphone in China can create a truly personalized and locally relevant experience on their device.

Nokia and Microsoft also announced the 'Be Top' programme, which is designed to encourage and support developers in creating great new applications on Windows Phone specifically for people in China, illustrating our commitment to the local ecosystem of application developers and service providers.

In addition to the Nokia 800C we plan to introduce a range of new smartphone products to consumers in China. In the second quarter of 2012, China Telecom will also offer the Nokia 610C.

Learn more about developing for Windows Phone.

Get the Windows Phone SDK 7.1.1 update.

Get more information about the launch of the Nokia 800C.

 

To drive innovation and business opportunities in Finland’s mobile ecosystem and beyond, Nokia and Microsoft have jointly agreed to each invest up to 9 million euros over three years in a new mobile-application-development program at Aalto University. The program, called AppCampus, has been established to foster the creation of innovative apps for several mobile ecosystems, including Windows Phone, Nokia Symbian and Series 40, to create a new generation of self-sustaining mobile startups.

AppCampus will launch this May, led by Aalto University. The programme is expected to attract thousands of application proposals from students and entrepreneurs worldwide. Aalto University will also contribute premises, coaching services, and access to both business and academic networks. Mobile entrepreneurs who participate in AppCampus will also receive support, training, funding, and mentoring by mobile-industry veterans, who will help them commercialize their apps while retaining intellectual-property rights for their innovations.

‘AppCampus offers a great opportunity for entrepreneurs to put their ideas into practice and create world-class mobile products. Our focus is to foster innovation and help local developers create successful businesses: this programme will help create opportunities not just in Finland, but all over the world by connecting them with consumers from over 190 countries that download millions of apps every day through their Nokia phones’, says Marco Argenti, SVP, Nokia Developer Experience & Marketplace.

‘The partnership between Microsoft and Nokia is a critical investment in this growing ecosystem’, said Jyrki Katainen, Finland’s prime minister, ‘and represents an exciting opportunity and access to global markets for our local startup community.’

Learn more about AppCampus.

Your worldwide market for applications and content running on Nokia’s newest Windows Phone-based smartphones just got a whole lot bigger. With Nokia Lumia smartphones currently available in 35 markets, Microsoft has just expanded the Windows Phone Marketplace to include 23 more countries, bringing the worldwide total to 63 countries where Marketplace is now available.

The 23 additional countries are: Bahrain, Bulgaria, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, Estonia, Iceland, Iraq, Israel, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Vietnam. 

In terms of actual potential app customers, the addition of new price points and customers in China and the other new markets represents a near 60 per cent increase in the total addressable market for Windows Phone products.
 
To expand your app’s reach to Windows Phone owners in these recently-added countries, log into the Microsoft App Hub and add the markets from the list — or choose ‘Worldwide Distribution’ if you would like your app to appear in all 63 of the Marketplaces now available. You need to do this even if you’ve previously opted to make your app available worldwide.

Also, please note that apps submitted for Indonesia, Malaysia, and China will be subject to additional requirements.  
 
Remember, Windows Phone 7.5 lets you create apps and content for all Nokia Lumia smartphones, including the recently announced Nokia Lumia 610 smartphone. These phones will open the door to new price points and customer segments in several high growth markets around the world.
 
To help you test and fine-tune your apps for distribution on the latest Nokia Lumia smartphones, Microsoft has released a technical preview of the 7.1.1 SDK Update. It gives you access to a 256 MB emulator that lets you determine how your apps install and run on lower-memory phones. This preview does not include a ‘go live’ license, so you cannot publish apps created with it. A final version of the SDK, complete with the go-live license, will be available later this month.

See below for an overview about how to add more markets to your app distribution.

How to add more Markets for your Windows Phone apps:

1. Log into App Hub with your developer credentials and navigate to your “my apps” list, then select a specific app to get to the my app page:
   
2. On the My App page, navigate to the “lifecycle” tab, then select Edit catalog details:
   
3. This will take you to the “describe” page, please click Next at the bottom to go to the “price” page.
4. On the pricing page, select Worldwide Distribution, noting that your app will be submitted into all new markets. You can unselect any markets where you would prefer not to distribute your app. Double-check your market selections then select Save and Quit. And you’re done.

Next steps:

• Log into the Microsoft App Hub and add your new markets.
• Download the Microsoft Windows Phone SDK 7.1.1 technical preview.
• Check out Nokia’s best practice tips for delivering apps to Windows Phone with 256 MB.

The “try & buy” and freemium business models have become a major source of revenue for mobile app developers on multiple platforms. At our recent Nokia Developer day during Mobile World Congress, Windows Phone developers along with Todd Brix from Microsoft told us about the dramatic download and revenue increases that had occurred following the introduction of try & buy options.

Both freemium and try & buy are enabled by in-app purchasing (IAP) functionality, and you can now add these options to your Qt apps that are distributed through Nokia Store.

IAP gives your users a direct way to purchase content directly from within your app, using a few quick steps, creating a seamless user experience. And ultimately, this means more revenue for you and your company.

While the app you publish in Nokia Store may be free to download, IAP gives you the opportunity to make money after the download through the transactions (i.e., purchases) made within the app itself. If you are planning to publish, or if you have already published premium content to Nokia Store, you might consider converting that content to a freemium or try & buy version with IAP.

IAP can create repeat revenue through ongoing purchases of digital content from your app. For example, gamers could purchase multiple new levels or new items to enrich their experience of playing your game.

How is In-App Purchasing being used today?

Using the Qt SDK you can now offer in-app purchasing for a wide range of use cases and apps.  Some of the ways we're seeing in-app purchase used effectively include:

• Offering a new level to unlock in a game
• Selling virtual goods or currency  that can be used to enhance gameplay
• To buy a new guide in a maps-based application
• To offer subscription payments or donations to a charitable organization
• To upgrade to a premium version of an app (such as an advertising free version)

These types of transactions are easy to implement, and offer a great user experience – the user never leaves the app to complete the purchase. Additionally, your users can be confident in each transaction, as explicit purchase confirmation is required for each purchase.



Remember, with in-app purchases, there's money to be made!

When you add IAP to your Qt apps distributed through Nokia Store, you have the potential to reach all Symbian^3 and later devices giving you a very big potential customer base.

You can add in-app purchase functionality to a tremendous range of Nokia phones. In addition to IAP for Qt-powered smartphones, tools are available to include IAP in apps for new Series 40 mobile phones, including the Nokia Asha 303 (more information is available here). 

The standard revenue share terms of Nokia Store remain the same when you use IAP. Additionally, standard price points and billing options – including operator billing – also remain the same when you choose to add IAP to your apps. You can use IAP in any of the 190+ markets where you can sell your apps in Nokia Store today.

Ready to begin?

What are you waiting for? We have the tools and technology you need to get started with IAP right away. Just download the Qt SDK 1.2 and get the IAP API from the repository. The IAP API for Qt can be used with apps for all Symbian^3 and later smartphones, so the install base – along with the revenue potential – is huge.

Start using IAP with your Qt app.

Download the Qt SDK 1.2.

 

Creating a prototype of your new app is a vital part of the development process, and we recently created two new videos to help you avoid common prototyping mistakes.
 
The first video shows you the basics of creating a simple prototype, outlining some easy methods for drawing your app idea, and taking it from pen-and-paper to software solutions including Adobe Illustrator, Balsamiq and Inkscape.
 
Creating icons for your prototype app can also be simplified if you use our Nokia Icon Toolkit. It features some ready-made icons you can use in your app, and templates for creating new Nokia icons. Combine this with Visual design stencils, and you can easily sketch how your app is going to look.
 
Our second video shows some common problems and mistakes you might encounter when using Qt Quick components to design Symbian apps.
 
Common pitfalls are also covered in our Symbian Design Guidelines library.

 

 

A preview of the updated Nokia Store Content Guidelines (v1.4), which includes important new privacy guidelines, is now available online for your review.

These updated guidelines will go into effect on 8 April 2012, and the new privacy policy specifically affects any new apps that gather personal information.

It should be noted that apps that are already published in Nokia Store do not need to be resubmitted for publication.

These updated content guidelines also include additions to the section about in-app purchasing, and requirements for any app that makes use of this monetization option.

We strongly encourage you to make the time to review this important information, to avoid any potential problems during the QA process.

You can get the latest content guidelines in the Nokia Publish site.

For more information, please contact Nokia Support.

 

Nokia's preferred in-app advertising solution provider, inneractive, recently announced that they have made a QML API available for their in-app advertising solution.

The new QML beta project, which is compatible with Qt and Qt Quick applications, was developed in-house by teams from inneractive and Nokia to provide developers with a seamless integration experience, along with a robust monetization opportunity.

For Qt developers with apps in Nokia Store, the opportunities continue to grow. As Daniel Kihlberg, Global Director Qt Ecosystem at Nokia states, "The 180 million Qt-enabled smartphones in the market, and the increasing popularity of Qt among developers have led to more great apps for Nokia users, helping drive Nokia Store to 13 million downloads per day." 

"By introducing a new Qt-based (QML) in-app advertising solution, we will make it easier for developers to capitalize on the installed and growing base of Nokia users worldwide – especially Belle UI users. The new revenue opportunities this creates will make Qt developers even happier." Daniel added.

Among the huge install base of Qt-enabled devices developers can target is the new Nokia 808 PureView, which wowed Mobile World Congress last month, taking the top prize for the 'Best New Mobile Handset, Device or Tablet at Mobile World Congress 2012' in Barcelona.

"We continue to receive a lot of positive feedback from users about the new Belle UI," Daniel added.

According to inneractive, top developers are making $40,000 - $60,000 per month with inneractive's in-app ads. "Making this new in-app advertising solution from inneractive available to more and more developers will further strengthen developers' monetization opportunities with Nokia," Daniel said.  



To get started, download the new QML API from inneractive's website.

 

 

… but get ready to find out how you can make it grow on mobile. The forthcoming Revenue Models and Developer Monetization Tools webinar — with two sessions on 28 and 29 March — will show you the new opportunities that have been created with Nokia’s latest monetization solutions.

Attend the webinar to learn which solution —in-app purchase or in-app advertising — suits you and your apps best.
Hear how to use in-app purchasing to sell upgrades, subscriptions, and digital assets, as well as how these revenue strategies can be applied to your apps. The technical enablers, Qt and Java ME, will be introduced so developers can get started immediately.

The webinar will then look at in-app advertising. With the help of one of Nokia’s preferred in-app adverting partner, you will find out how to add adverts to your apps to maximise revenue without overwhelming your customers.

At the end of the session you will see that Nokia’s monetization tools mean offering free downloads of your applications can be more lucrative than asking customers to pay for them upfront.

Covering all the options, with the minimum of technospeak, this webinar is ideal for business manager, marketer, and developers — in fact, anyone who seeks to make money from mobile.

Sign up for the first session: 28 March, 4 p.m. UTC

Sign up for the second session: 29 March, 8 a.m. UTC

 

"We want to work with you to build your business on great platforms." This was the opening message of Nokia Developer Day at Mobile World Congress, delivered by Nokia Senior VP of Developer Experience and Marketplace Marco Argenti. 

The 300 developers at the event saw just how dedicated Nokia is to this goal, and to every single developer targeting Nokia. Our team was there, capturing video from the day. The videos are now live - lots of them - so please note the following VLBPA (very long blog post alert). 

Marco Argenti's keynote opened the day. Here it is in full. 


Having our developer event on day one of Mobile World Congress was good timing. The event was buzzing with chatter about the morning's Nokia press conference, and the six devices we had just launched.

Our Nokia Developer Day venue was a sea of people. The event capacity was 300, and even before the conference began we had more people than we could ever accommodate express interest in attending. These videos are our way of bringing the event to everyone that wasn't able to join us in the room.

The keynote touched on some exciting new data points about the growing Nokia opportunity:

• There are now 13 million downloads per day at Nokia Store. One year ago the total was 3 million per day
• We are now selling Nokia Lumia in 31 markets, and adding 23 more, including China
• The number of WIndows Phone apps published per day is up 300% year on year
• More than a third of Nokia Store downloads now come from Series 40 customers, up 250% on last year
• Qt tools were downloaded over 2 million times last year, up from around 1.6 million in 2010

1. Great new products and expanding markets
2. Truly differentiated app experiences for consumers in all corners of the world
3. Revenue tools for you to monetize your apps
4. Local support - because local is central to everything Nokia does.

Monetization panel
Nokia Lumia momentum and Nokia's range of tools for monetizing apps on every platform was the theme of the monetization panel held on the day. Todd Brix from Microsoft was among panelists discussing the try & buy business model and its dramatic effect on Windows Phone app download and revenue. 

The insights here weren't lost on the Series 40 developers in the room - all three new Nokia Asha devices launched at MWC are compatible with in-app purchasing (and therefore try & buy). 

Offer Yehudai from inneractive provided some particularly interesting statistics on in-app advertising on Series 40 and other Nokia platforms. They expect the money they share with Nokia developers via ad revenue split to grow very strongly in 2012.

A great example of developers taking advantage of these opportunities is the team at Twist Mobile. They star in the following video, which was shown to the audience at Nokia Developer Day.
 



Partner announcements at Mobile World Congress
As well announcing six new devices, Mobile World Congress was also the scene of some announcements about new relationships with globally recognised companies and brands.

Nokia Lumia's arrival and Nokia's growing momentum is attracting the world's best brands to deliver great experiences with us, and opportunities for you to work with them. 

Partners announced on the day included voddler, Red Bull, Kraft and Michelin. Here is what they had to say.

  


 

Create for Millions winners 

The day culminated with the announcement of our Create for Millions contest winners. 
These developers created outstanding Series 40 apps that are delighting and inspiring users all over the world. Some of them managed to deliver their app by themselves, and all were passionate about encouraging other developers to look at the Series 40 opportunity around them. 

The winners' success brought home the message about Nokia's local capabilities. Nokia has developer programs in your part of the world. 
From there we aim to work with you to help you scale your app beyond local to take advantage of Nokia's wide reach.
 
Videos of our proud Create for Millions winners are below.







  





Still reading? The Mobile World Congress developer day and the entire event was a tremendous success, and it was also great fun. Your opportunity to work with us and succeed with us is growing - we hope to see you at the next event we are at.

Do you want to see cool new Nokia phones, hot apps, talk with leading Windows Phones developers and jam? Then plan to visit the Nokia Lab at SXSW Interactive for happy hour from 4:00 – 8:30 pm on 12 March 2012.

Nokia’s R&D lab is being transplanted from its snowy perch in northern Finland and dropped into the middle of the warmer climes of central Texas just for SXSW. The Nokia Lab - a first-of-its kind, three-domed structure for SXSW (located at 2nd and Brazos), will give SXSW Interactive attendees an engaging, behind-the-scenes sneak peek at the latest Nokia has to offer.

(Above: A peak inside what visitors to the Nokia Lab might see. Photo courtesy of Chris Sifton.)

Nokia will show off its newest Nokia Lumia Windows Phones, and host app demos from the likes of Foursquare, textPlus, iHeartRadio, Ask Ziggy, and Smart Tile Pro (details about the demos are below). Nokia and Windows Phone experts will be on hand to answer questions, tell you how to join Nokia Developer, and give tips about building apps. Later in the night, a live band and DJ will take the stage to keep the party going.  

Guests will have the opportunity to check out the new Nokia Lumia portfolio of Windows Phones, including the much-anticipated Lumia 900 from AT&T and the recently launched Nokia Lumia 710 and Nokia Lumia 800, too.

On your way in to the Nokia Lab, be sure to get your Nokia Developer t-shirt and grab an energy drink. Then chill out while you peruse the lineup of new smartphones and talk with developers demonstrating their newest apps.

In between app demos, check out the rest of the Nokia Lab, test your foosball or ping pong skills, and enjoy complimentary drinks and appetizers.  To keep up with everything that Nokia will be doing at SXSW, check out Conversations by Nokia. The blog will follow all the action.   

The Nokia Lab is an experience you won’t want to miss. Come be amazing everyday with Nokia at SXSW. Ready. Set {Code}.

App demos in the Nokia Lab at SXSW:

• Foursquare - Helps everyone keep up with friends, discover what's nearby, save money and unlock deals wherever you are.
• iHeartRadio - More than 850 of the nation's most popular live broadcast and digital-only radio stations from 150 U.S. cities, plus user-created custom stations.
• textPlus - A leading provider of free mobile communications worldwide. Over 25 million people have downloaded textPlus to talk and text for free. Coming soon to Windows Phone.
• Ask Ziggy - Your Personal Virtual Assistant. You can have Ask Ziggy perform tasks and retrieve instant answers to questions, all by speaking to your phone.
• Smart Tile Pro - Users can put any text, notes or reminders they want on the front and back of a live tile. The user can choose any photo to use as an image on a live tile and create as many as they want.

 

Nokia Developer was the headline sponsor of the Photo Hack Day 2 event, presented by the New York-based photo-editing software company Aviary at the end of last month. More than 250 developers from across the United States participated in the sold-out event, submitting a total of 58 original hacks that bring creative new ideas and imagination to photography. Several of the hacks submitted were specifically for use on Windows Phone, using an early version of Aviary’s new SDK for Windows Phone 7 -- the final release is expected to be available in Q2 of 2012. All of the hacks were completed within 32 hours.

At the end of the weekend, all of the participating teams had two minutes each to present their hacks to a four judge panel, which included Jim Estrin from The New York Times, Jamal Fanaian from Flickr, Jason Morrow from Betaworks and Nokia’s Jason Black.

As a headline sponsor, Nokia awarded special prizes (Nokia Lumia 800 smartphones) for the best apps submitted for use on Windows Phone. The winners were Arcadius Kazimierski who created an app that recognizes the faces on U.S. currency for use by people with visual impairments; and Peggy Fung, who submitted her app that helps people who are colour blind to detect specific colours.

For the rest of the competition, when considering the 50+ hacks submitted, the judges selected the following winners:

• First place: Synviary by developer and student Yufei Liu – this app allows two people to edit photos at the same time, from two different computers, using the Aviary software.
• Second place: What Is Up by the team Matt Grasser, Chris Guess, Nick Ihm, and Emily Duong. This location-based app can give you the latest details about the hottest places in your city. 
• Third place: Rotobooth from the team of Mike Kelberman, Liangjie Xia, and Chris Bell. This physical device combines a rotary phone, a digital camera, and lots of software to capture images and post them online.

Synviary was also the People's Choice Award winner, as voted by the attendees at the end of the Hack Day event.

Above: Photo taken by the Rotobooth machine during their live demo. 

Other event sponsors included: Fujifilm, Getty Images, Bing, Constant Contact, Face.com, Piictu, Shutterstock, Flashfoto, Flickr, Imgur, LTU Technologies, Penguin Digital, Pixable, Sincerely, SmugMug, Tracks, and Twilio!

Companies that provided demos of their APIs, and supported the hackers with development assistance included Aviary, Artsicle, CardThis, Etsy, foursquare, ImageChef, Jux, Lomography, The New York Times, Ordr.In, PicPlz, and Tumblr!

You can view more photos from the event in this Flickr set.

Aviary’s random facts from the weekend full of hacks: Participants and their guests consumed 250 bagels, 300+ tacos, 300+ burritos, 12 buckets of BBQ chicken, 20 quarts of pulled pork, 12 pans of cornbread, 20 quarts of mashed potatoes, 150 cookies, 80 boxes of pizza (640 slices total), 27 cases of water (432 bottles total), 384 beers, and 28 cases of soda (448 cans total) in 32 hours!

 

Nokia Developer Champion Pasi Manninen shares his new Windows Phone skill in an award-winning series of Wiki articles. An independent publisher based in Jyväslkylä, Finland, Pasi has successful titles in Nokia Store and Windows Phone Marketplace.

His Finnkino Elokuvat app in Windows Phone Marketplace allows users to see film times and movie trailers for the Finnkino Theatre chain in Finland. To create the app he loads and parses XML data from the theatre's web site, and he shares his techniques with the community. Pasi recently shared additional work he has done creating a Snake game and Weather Forecast app for Widows Phone 7.

As a Nokia Developer Champion since 2009, Pasi’s creativity and willingness to share continue to inspire the entire developer community.