Nokia Developer News

… 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.

This week at Mobile World Congress we announced the arrival of the world’s greatest camera smartphone, the Nokia 808 PureView.

The Nokia 808 PureView is a revolution in mobile imaging technology, delivering imaging capabilities previously unavailable in a smartphone. Its incredible images and full HD video come from Nokia’s innovative PureView imaging technology, Carl Zeiss optics, xenon flash, and an unprecedented 41 megapixel sensor.

Starting up in under a second — even from lock — the camera uses an unprecedented 41MP sensor combined with Carl Zeiss optics and a xenon flash to deliver outstanding images in almost every shooting situation. Nokia PureView imaging technology can distil 7 pixels into 1 for stunningly sharp and clear 5 MP photos that are easy to share. Discover the details of Nokia PureView technology (whitepaper)

The phone also offers 3x loss-less slide zoom, with no loss of image quality, and all the shareability you expect in a premium smartphone.. The Nokia 808 PureView goes beyond the still image, with 1080p full HD video recording at 30 fps with 4x slide zoom — without loss of image quality.

The image quality is only half the video story. For the first time in a smartphone, the Nokia 808 PureView utilizes Nokia Rich Recording: Offering pure crystal clear, distortion-free audio at levels of up to 140 dB by combining a unique digital microphone with advanced Nokia algorithms.

Qt and the Nokia 808 PureView

Qt is the way for you to create apps that harness the revolutionary abilities of the Nokia 808 PureView. The smartphone has the latest Qt APIs built in, including: Qt 4.7.4 with Qt Mobility 1.2.1, and Qt Quick Components 1.1, making it a perfect device for your latest Qt and Qt Quick-based apps.

To access the remarkable imaging and audio capabilities of the device, you will take advantage of the Qt Mobility multimedia APIs. Using these APIs, your app can connect to the phone’s camera as well as its other sensors. You also get a range of features to manipulate the content from the camera, including control over auto focus. Now you can easily bring the outstanding quality of PureView and Nokia Rich Recording to the images, video, and audio content captured by your apps.

See how both National Geographic and Pikchur used Qt to bring their apps to Nokia 808 PureView.  What you do next is entirely up to you.

 

Using the Qt Mobility APIs, you can unlock the potential of NFC, sensors, and almost every part of the phone your apps will need.

• Learn more about the Nokia 808 PureView

• View the Nokia 808 PureView device specifications

• New to Qt? Check our Getting started with Qt guide

We are proud to present a great new target for your Windows Phone apps - the Nokia Lumia 610 - announced at Mobile World Congress yesterday.

Aimed at young people who want an affordable introduction to Lumia and Windows Phone, the Nokia Lumia 610 provides easy access to social networks, web browsing, music, games, navigation and tens of thousands of apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace. It comes in four vibrant colors and will cost just EUR 189, before taxes or subsidies, and is expected to begin shipping in the second quarter of 2012.

The fourth Nokia Lumia means more opportunity to developers, particularly given its barrier-breaking price point.  Its distinctive profile and finely beveled metallic edges are built to convey quality and aspiration.

It offers a 3.7” TFT LCD display, with the same 800 x 480 pixel (WVGA) resolution found across the Lumia range and a 5MP camera wrapped in the iconic industrial design for which Lumia is becoming renowned.

It also offers A-GPS and an enhanced Adreno 200 GPU, to deliver the rich Windows Phone and apps experience to more consumers.The key to the Nokia Lumia 610 delivering Windows Phone to new places and new people is a new software release from Microsoft that delivers enhanced capabilities to the Windows Phone 7.5 platform.  The software release, available from April, optimises Windows Phone to support lower memory and processor requirements, while still delivering the same great experience for more affordable products.

The Nokia Lumia 610 features an 880 MHz QC MSM7227A processor and 256 Mb of RAM. This baseline spec, combined with other smart component choices, significantly reduces the cost of the Nokia Lumia 610 without compromising consumer experience.

Nokia Lumia 610 specs

More tools
To help you prepare your apps for the Nokia Lumia 610, there is a technical preview available of an SDK update to the Windows Phone SDK . This update gives you access to the 256Mb emulator to let you determine how your apps run and install on lower memory devices. Note that the preview does not include a 'go live' license, so you can not publish apps created with it. A final version of the SDK, with 'go live' licence, is expected next month.

Learn more about the development tools, including the technical preview of the updated Windows Phone SDK

Best practices for 256MB
The Nokia Lumia 610 will offer users the same rich Windows Phone experience found across the Nokia Lumia range, but it does so using less memory – which does mean less memory available to your apps. To help, our Principal Engineer Windows Phone Justin Angel has prepared some best practice guidelines for delivering apps to 256MB Windows Phones. 

More markets, more marketplace
As the Nokia Lumia 610 will bring the amazing Windows Phone experience to new markets and people, you won’t be surprised to learn that the Windows Phone Marketplace is also expanding. Five new countries — Argentina, Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru, and the Philippines — have been added already and many more will follow during the rest of 2012. With more markets, more currencies, and more languages supported your Nokia Lumia opportunity in 2012 will be greater than ever.
Get the tools for developing Nokia Lumia apps

Video - how to build a top Windows Phone app 

Code examples

 

The Grand Prize winners of Nokia’s 2011 Create for Millions developer contest were featured at a special awards ceremony held today during the Nokia Developer Day at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain.

This global developer contest received more than 1,200 total submissions, resulting in the same number of new apps published to Nokia Store for use on Nokia Series 40 phones, including the new Asha line. The contest supported Nokia’s strategy by identifying locally relevant content, and served to showcase Nokia’s Series 40 developer offering around both Java and web apps.

Here are the top three winning apps in each of the contest categories:
 
Access to Knowledge:
1. Baby Write Number by Mico Wendy, Indonesia
2. myQR.Card by Damian Dominiak, Poland    
3. YouTube Teletext by David Bello, Colombia

Emotional Closeness:
1. I'm Feeling..! by Mohammed Diab, Egypt            
2. Soundtracker Radio, by Daniele Calabrese, United States
3. qeep, by Stefanie Merten, Germany    

Fun and Games:
1. Sushi Loop by Kosti Rytkönen, Finland    
2. Sandbox by Alexander Fürgut, Germany        
3. Crash Test Dummies 2 by Ledicia Perez, United Kingdom

In the Know:
1. AroundMe by James Mwai, Kenya    
2. HeatMap by David Bello, Colombia
3. TransJakarta S40 by Kemas Dimas Ramanditya, Indonesia

The top 10 winning apps in all four categories will receive cash prizes from Nokia (in those categories with tie results, all winners will receive cash prizes, too). For each of the four contest categories, there is a top prize of 50,000 euros in each category. The winning apps will be promoted globally in various Nokia-owned channels including: online, social media, newsletters and more. The top app in each of the four categories will also receive a free user experience (UX) consultation from Nokia; and support from a top design agency to create Spotlight banners featuring the winning apps.

Special prizes were awarded to apps showcasing the best touch feature; the best location-aware app; and the best overall Series 40 web app. Those winners are as follows:

• Best Series 40 Location-based App: Locago, submitted by Patric Nordström from Sweden.
• Best Series 40 Touch-based App: Sandbox, submitted by Alexander Fürgut from Germany.     
• Best Series 40 Web App (Tie - prize money will be split): AroundMe by James Mwai from Kenya; and HeatMap by David Bello from Colombia.

Additionally, there were 10 regional contests held at the same time as the global contest. Details about regional contest winners will be available soon.

Apps were submitted by developers from 61 countries around the world. The majority of the submissions came from the APAC region (61%), followed by EMEA (33%) and the Americas (6%). Here are the top 10 countries for contest submissions:

• India = 353 apps
• Indonesia = 149 apps
• Kenya = 70 apps
• Vietnam = 56 apps
• Germany = 54 apps
• Philippines = 47 apps
• Denmark = 47 apps
• Malaysia = 46 apps
• Singapore = 37 apps
• Brazil = 34 apps

These results point strongly to Nokia’s strategy to identify locally relevant content for use by consumers.

It is also worth noting that Nokia Series 40 phones now account for more than 30 per cent of overall downloads from Nokia Store, and with improved business model support for In-App Purchases and In-App Advertising, the opportunity for developers continues to grow.   

Nokia congratulates all of the contest winners, and thanks all of the developers who made Create for Millions such a tremendous success.

We want to show off your Windows Phone app at SXSW.  If you have a unique, cool, or downright amazing app – and are headed to SXSW – you could land a chance to demo it inside the Nokia Lab, a one-of-a-kind, free-standing structure Nokia will erect near the convention center for SXSW Interactive.

It’s simple to take part. Just tell us about your Windows Phone app, and you may get to show it off to hundreds of people during Nokia’s Developer Day at SXSW on 12 March 2012 at your own demo station inside the Nokia Lab.

Visitors to the Nokia Lab at SXSW will experience Nokia’s newest Windows Phone devices, including the Nokia Lumia 900, as well as getting a first-hand experience with your app. The app demos inside the Nokia Lab will run from 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. that day. Up to 10 apps will be selected for this special opportunity.

Here’s what you need to do to have your app considered for a spot in the exclusive demo section at Nokia’s Developer Day:

- Have an app that works on a Nokia Lumia Windows Phone device
- Send the following brief details via e-mail to nokiadeveloper@thelucidway.com:

* Your name, company and contact information (include email and phone)
* A link to your app in Windows Phone Marketplace, or link to the private beta of your app in Windows Phone Marketplace
* A brief description and any screenshots of your app
* Why your app is amazing, cool, or unique

That’s it.

We will contact all developers who are chosen to participate.  

The Windows Phone Marketplace currently has nearly 65,000 apps and publishes about 300 apps every day. Come build an experience – not just another app – and bring smartphones to life for brands and consumers. Come be amazing everyday with Nokia Developer.

See you at SXSW. Ready.Set {Code}.

 

Congratulations to Jack Franklin, Neil Lock, and Adam North, winners of free tickets to the jQuery conference in Oxford, UK courtesy Nokia Developer. This was the first ever European conference dedicated to the popular jQuery JavaScript library, and judging by the quality of the conference and the enthusiasm of the attendees, it's not likely to be the last. Nokia Developer was proud to be the spotlight sponsor at the event.

Jack Franklin at jQuery UK

 

 

Neil Lock at jQuery UK

 

 

Adam North at jQuery UK

If you did not get a chance to attend the sold-out conference, check out Jack’s notes which he published 'On Github, in Markdown, like a proper geek should, live blogged by committing & pushing changes to Github.'  

He notes that coming in jQuery mobile v1.1 ( available for testing now) you will be able to set data-enhance="false" or data-ajax="false" attributes to tell jQuery mobile to keep its hands off your DOM.