Nokia Developer News

Nokia has just announced the Nokia C5-03, an inexpensive touchscreen smartphone based on the Symbian S60 5.0 platform. Features of the Nokia C5-03 include a 3.2-inch screen, Wi-Fi, A-GPS, Ovi Maps 3.0, 5-megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom, accelerometer, and up to 16 gigabytes of user memory. The Nokia C5-03 will ship globally at the end of this quarter, and it will retail for 170 euros.

Explore the Nokia C5-03 announcement (includes video).

View the Nokia C5-03 technical specifications.

Mobile developers can learn more about Near Field Communications at the NFC Forum Spotlight for Developers being held in San Francisco on 5 November. This event, sponsored by the NFC Forum, will provide practical knowledge, networking opportunities, and hands-on training by leaders in the field. Nokia is a Gold sponsor of the event, and two Nokia executives will be among the presenters: Peter Preuss will provide an overview of use cases and successful implementations of NFC technology worldwide, and Jure Sustersic will discuss hands-on programming for Nokia devices.

Get event details and register for the NFC Forum Spotlight for Developers.

Explore Nokia’s NFC technology and related resources.

Nokia's second smartphone based on the Symbian^3 platform, the Nokia C7, has started shipping to customers worldwide. The launch follows closely the start of shipments for the Nokia N8, also based on Symbian^3, which began on 30 September.

The Nokia C7 is also spurring a new contest. Because the Nokia C7 is optimised for social networking, Nokia will seek the most active Facebook user from the 1.4+ million fans on the company’s Facebook page. Five finalists will be selected, each of whom will be provided with a Nokia C7 to organize a party using various social networks. The fan who best captures their party through Facebook -- generating the most coverage with updates and posts -- will win a Nokia C7 for themselves and 20 friends.

View the Nokia C7-00 technical specifications.

Learn more about the Nokia C7 shipments.

The mWomen BOP (Base of Pyramid) App Challenge seeks mobile apps that can improve the lot of women in developing nations. Two cash prizes of $10,000 (USD) will be awarded, one to the developer of the best app for low-end mobile devices, and the other, for smartphones. Winners will also receive opportunites to showcase their apps to a working group of 20 mobile operators, consult with frog design, and meet with investment firm Carmel Ventures.

All entries are due by 7 December. The winners will be announced at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2011.

Enter the mWomen BOP App Challenge.

U.S. and Canadian developers, do you need to learn more about Qt, Nokia’s framework for cross-platform app development? If so, you’re in luck. Qt training opportunities are everywhere this autumn. Here are just a few of the upcoming trainings:

* Toronto, Canada: 13 - 14 October

* Austin, Texas: 19 - 20 October

* Silicon Valley, California: 1 – 3 November

And of course, don’t forget abut Qt Developer Days, which will be coming to San Francisco, California, on 1 – 3 November.

Also, Nokia will give every attendee an N8 kit, which will help them to develop apps for Symbian^3 devices. Nokia will also provide free one-on-one user experience (UX) evaluations, a service worth $1,500 (USD), for those planning to attend a training.

View all the upcoming Qt training opportunities.

Start developing cross-platform apps today with Qt.

The African market is growing strong, with consumers and developers reaping rewards. Since July 1, 2010, Ovi Store delivered a 50% growth in downloads and a 51% increase in revenue by African consumers and African developers respectively. Ovi Store grew South African purchases by 438% since operator billing was rolled out in June.

This success has attracted a 60% increase in African developers registered with Forum Nokia, and these developers are already delivering prize-winning apps. In this year's Calling All Innovators contest AppCRAFT (South Africa), IRWAA and LLC (Egypt) climbed to the top spots in the Life Improvement category. Also, Virtual City (Kenya) received $1 million (USD) in funding as the winner of the Growth Economy Venture Challenge.  The company’s Mobile Distributor Solution, which supports small and micro enterprises in emerging markets, was chosen by a panel of judges as the app most likely to improve the lives of people in the developing world.
 
Growth has been widespread throughout the region, with trends that showcase the strength of Nokia’s global reach. In South Africa, there is a strong base of mobile developers that sell to consumers in multiple languages. Northern Africa is currently one of the top regions for developers serving Arabic-speaking markets worldwide.  Finally, East Africa is becoming a center of entrepreneurial growth, with consumers pioneering the use of mobile payment systems like M-PESA, Zap, Yu-Cash powered by Obopay, MTN Money and Orange Money which together have an estimated 12million subscribers connected.
 
African developers have many opportunities for continued training and engagement throughout the remainder of 2010. Opportunities include Mobile Monday networking events; developer breakfasts and Qt training events, among others. Below is a list of the planned events; To get the latest information on Nokia developer events in Africa, follow our event calendar.

Nokia's latest entertainment smartphone, the highly anticipated Nokia N8 with Ovi services, has started shipping. Customers who have placed a pre-order for the Nokia N8 in Nokia Online Shops and Nokia retail stores will be the first to receive their Nokia N8. Market availability will vary by country and operator, with broad availability in the coming weeks.

The first of a series of smartphones based on the new Symbian, the Nokia N8 is fast and easy to use and supports true multitasking, allowing users to run multiple apps simultaneously and switch between them easily. The Nokia N8 also offers the highest quality photos and HD-quality videos, thanks to a 12-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics.

Learn more about the Nokia N8 shipments.

View the Nokia N8 technical specifications.

As we recently noted in this blog, the number of developers with more than 1 million downloads of their applications and content from Ovi Store continues to grow week by week.

Now, we are pleased to announce that 70 developers and publishers from around the world have more than 1 million downloads of their Ovi Store content. The following list presents developers and publishers, alphabetically by region, that have reached this significant milestone. Additionally, links to success stories that have been written about several of these publishers are included below.

EMEA region:

•    3D Arts (Jyväskylä, Finland) - Success story
•    Alibro Ltd. (Chalfont St Giles, United Kingdom)
•    Connect2Media (Manchester, United Kingdom
•    Dada.net SPA (Florence, Italy)
•    eBuddy B.V. (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
•    Finndesign Oy (Helsinki, Finland)
•    Fox Mobile Distribution GmbH (Berlin, Germany)
•    fringland Ltd. (Tel Aviv, Israel) – Success story
•    F-Secure (Helsinki, Finland) - Success story
•    Gameloft SA (Paris, France)
•    Gedda-Headz A/S  (Klambenborg, Denmark)
•    Gnokkia Themes (Antignano d’Asti, Italy)
•    Guided Ways Technologies Ltd (Slough, United Kingdom)
•    HeroCraft (Kaliningrad, Russia) – Success story
•    Idevio AB (Göteborg, Sweden) – Success story
•    innerActive (Tel Aviv. Israel) – Success story
•    I-play (London, UK)
•    Lunaforte (Hoorn, Netherlands) – Success story
•    M2Mobi (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
•    MobiFun Soft (Sofiya, Bulgaria)
•    Mobstar Media Ltd (East Sussex, United Kingdom)
•    Mopius (Sankt Pölten, Austria )
•    Nimbuzz (Capelle aan den Ijssel, Netherlands) – Success story
•    Numo AS (Oslo, Norway) – Success story
•    Offscreen (Helsinki, Finland) – Success story
•    Opera Software ASA (Oslo, Norway)
•    Pico Brothers Ltd. (Vaasa, Finland)
•    Pizero Design by Michele Cerreta (Lucca, Italy)
•    Polarbit AB (Stockholm, Sweden) – Success story
•    Ravensoft Ltd (Manchester, United Kingdom) – Success story
•    Shazam Entertainment Ltd. (London, United Kingdom) – Success story
•    Skype Software S.a.r.l (Luxembourg)
•    Smartphoneware (Odessa, Ukraine)
•    Snaptu (London, United Kingdom)
•    SPB Software (Saint Petersburg, Russia)
•    Syntonetic Media Solutions (Frederiksberg, Denmark) – Success story
•    Tequila Mobile SA (Wroclaw, Poland)
•    UAB TeleSoftas (Kaunas, Lithuania)
•    ZingMagic (Amersham, United Kingdom)

Americas region:
•    A3 Media Network (Denver, CO)
•    ADA Sport Inc. (Los Angeles, CA)
•    Digital Chocolate (San Mateo, CA)
•    Electronic Arts (Redwood City, CA)
•    Facebook (Palo Alto, CA)
•    Oakley (Foothill Ranch, CA)
•    Paramount (Hollywood, CA)
•    PepsiCo (Purchase, NY)
•    PopCap Games, Inc. (Seattle, WA)
•    Qik, Inc. (Redwood City, CA)
•    R/GA (New York, NY)
•    skyrockit (San Francisco, CA)
•    TuneWiki (Milpitas, CA)
•    XiMAD Inc (San Francisco, CA)

China:
•    Beijing Sina Internet Information Service, Co., Ltd. (Shanghai, China)
•    JK Media Limited (Hong Kong, China)
•    Lei Ting Wan Jun Network Technology Ltd. (Beijing, China)
•    MMMOOO (Shanghai, China) – Success story
•    ThinkChange LTD (Shanghai, China)
•    White Complex (Hong Kong, China)
•    Zensis Ltd. (Hong Kong, China)

APAC region:
•    Arch Mobile Solutions Private Limited (Chandigarh, India)
•    Breakdesign Pte Ltd (Singapore)
•    CELL Co., Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan)
•    cellspecial (Tokyo, Japan)
•    Dalrus Private Limited (Singapore)
•    FrienzPlay / Jmap Inc. (Taipei, Taiwan)
•    Homeless Limited (Hong Kong, China)
•    Hosee Studio Co. (Taipei, Taiwan)
•    Indiagames (Mumbai, India)
•    Spice Labs (Delhi, India)

We expect to be able to add the names of more companies to the above list soon. Our congratulations to all of the companies that are seeing success in Ovi Store. 

Do you have questions, suggestions or other comments about Ovi by Nokia? Then be sure to join Nokia executive VP and Group Executive board member Tero Ojanperä for a Twitter conversation on Thursday, 30 September, from 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PDT (GMT - 7). Tero will take questions and engage in conversations through his personal handle @TeroatNokia.

If you have a question, idea or other comment, sum it up in Twitter’s limit of 140 characters, and please include the hash tag #Ovi.

Because 140 characters is not a lot of room, Tero will also respond at length to some of the questions on the Nokia Conversations blog.

So join the Ovi by Nokia conversation! Meet Tero on Twitter on Thursday, 30 September, from 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PDT (GMT-7).

Nokia and AT&T today jointly announced the North American regional edition of the 2010 Calling All Innovators competition. Far surpassing the other regional competitions, the prizes for the North American contest will be worth a total of $10 million (USD).

The contest is now open to developers that have created high-quality apps for U.S. or Canadian consumers that run on the Nokia N8 device. Entries can be submitted in any of 17 categories, and all entries are all due by 28 January 2011. The winners will be selected by Nokia, AT&T, and -- for the first time -- consumers, who will be able to use their downloading power to indicate their favourites.

Check out the CallingAllInnovators.com/10M contest rules, and submit your app.

Special cash prizes in Forum Nokia’s Calling All Innovators competition have just been announced. All entries to the overall competition were also eligible for these special prizes. The winners are:

• Best Application for the Nokia 900: This $50,000 (USD) prize will be split between two developers -- Fabien Chéreau of Germany for Stellarium Mobile; and Ben Lau of Hong Kong for FrontView 900.
• Best Cross-platform Application Using Qt: This $50,000 (USD) cash prize goes to Morpho Inc. of Japan for Morpho QuickPanorama.
• Best Utility: This $50,000 (USD) cash prize has been awarded to Roland Michelberger of Hungary for WakeUp.

Congratulations to the Calling All Innovators special winners!

Meet all the Calling All Innovators winners and runners-up.

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.

The audience loved them, and so did the judges. The team from iNDT rocked the Hackathon with their implementation of Face Recognition Device Lock. In less than two days, the virtuoso team of Jackson Feijo,  Allan Bezerra, and Wilson Prata performing with the latest Qt framework and the N8, delivered a live demo during the closing ceremony that had the crowd cheering."It was friendly, but competitive"  notes Forum Nokia Champion Jackson.

There was plenty of sophisticated technology in the background, but in the end it all come down to performance. Using the HDMI out port on the N8 to drive a huge display, the entire audience could see every nuance of Jackson's demonstration of the app. It flat-out worked.

If you have been following the competition closely you'll notice some numbers are a bit off. For months we have been talking abouta prize package totalling $100,000. That's what we all thought, until Tuesday.  

The competitors arrived in London thinking they were competing for a $50,000 (USD) grand prize, not to mention bragging rights and a ton of Ovi promotional support for their app. As they assembled in Hackathon central to beging thier coding, a few people rose to offer some opening encouragment. Among the speakers was Tom Libretto, currently VP of Services for Marketing and formerly head of Forum Nokia. On the spot, Tom doubled the grand prize to an even $100,000 (USD). Needless to say, he got a round of applause from the competitors.

Jackson Feijo, Allan Bezerra, and Wilson Prata from iNDT won grand prize honors from the judges, and also honors in "people's choice" voting conducted during the closing ceremony via SMS. They walked away with a total of $110,000 in cash prizes, plus promotional help in Ovi Store and a magnum of champagne. Not bad for 36 hours of work. (And a lifetime of skill in their heads when the entered the room.)

Kristopher Kantor, who is the chief developer of an application called Ansel-A, was a runner-up with his implementation of the Mobile Photoshop request that came in through the Make My App competition (from which all the app ideas came). Kristopher is an individual developer, and is now an individual publisher to Ovi Store. His deliberate approach to design before coding. During the judging Kristopher talked about how he consider what a graphics artist would want the app to do, and also what an experienced hacker would add to the experience.

Prashant Singh, from India's Spice Labs, also took runner-up honors for the Toddler Tutor educational app. Spice Labas already has several educational apps in OviStore, as well as the Twitter app called Trill .

What a great end to the event. These apps show how quickly skilled developers can create innovate apps when workign with the powerful Qt framework and the stellar hardware of the N8.

We have videos in editing that will show you the finalists in action. For now, you can revisit the run-up to the judging:

20 Sep updates:

• The winning team includes Jackson Feijo, Allan Bezerra, and Wilson Prata. My apologies to Wilson for leaving him out of my initial post. 

• I should clarify that the Hackathon contestants enter as individuals, not as representatives of their companies. The expense and time required to participate in the competition are the responsibility of the individual developers, and the prizes are the individuals' rewards. I include their company names when appropriate to give credit to organizations who hire great developers.

Today at the Nokia Developer Summit, the winner of Nokia’s Growth Economy Venture Challenge was named. The Challenge, announced in January, will invest $1 million (USD) in the developer with the biggest and best idea to transform the way consumers use Nokia devices, and to improve the lives of people in the developing world. Ideas were submitted by developers in more than 30 countries.

The winner is Virtual City Ltd. of Kenya, which won for its Mobile Distributor Solution app. The software supports small and micro enterprises in emerging markets. John Waibochi of Virtual City will receive $1 million (USD) in venture capital and a commitment from Nokia to help turn his idea into a business reality.


The other 9 finalists in the Growth Economy Venture Challenge are, in alphabetical order:

• Bionic Power - The Portable Power Solution (Canada)
• eVOTZ (United States)
• FloCash Payment Network (United Kingdom)
• IDIFIED (United States)
• m-Employment platform using SMS (Pakistan)
• mmatcher - your mobile, your marketplace (Slovenia)
• Mobile JobHunt (China)
• Remote Diagnostics Kit (India)
• Transclick for Globalization of m-commerce (United States)

Learn more about the Growth Economy Venture Challenge.

This video takes you inside this week's 2010 Calling All Innovators Hackathon in London. Nokia connected the best consumer generated app ideas with top developers from all over the world. The 13 best ideas were developed into real apps for the new Nokia N8 at the Nokia World Developers' Summit 2010 and competed for the main prize of 100 000 dollars. See Make My App and Hackathon Commences for details about apps and developers.