XenZu Technologies Develops a Worldwide Following with XENOZU YouTube player

OviPublisherSuccesses | 27 June, 2011 23:35

Based in Brisbane, California, XenZu Technologies LLC is a company with the know-how and talent base to develop apps that are exciting, practical and easy to use. Previously, the company based their business success on providing professional third-party mobile app development services to other companies - specifically those who are looking to leverage the Ovi Store for reaching Nokia's worldwide consumer audience.

Since then the company has created the free XENOZU YouTube player app for Symbian. This app is easier than ever for users to quickly browse and find the videos they want in less time than through a browser. With this app, XenZu has produced its own Ovi Store success - XENOZU has been downloaded more than 2.1 million times across 190 markets around the world.

 
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XenZu Technologies has been honing their skills on apps for client companies big and small, working on everything from core system functionality on mobile phones to rich applications with stylish, immersive user interfaces.

To-date, XenZu Technologies has delivered almost two dozen projects on different Nokia platforms using Qt/QML, native Symbian C++, and J2ME for the following mobile phones:

  • Symbian
  • Maemo
  • MeeGo

Founded in 2007, XenZu is a Forum Nokia PRO member company who provides mobile development services to a variety of organizations that want expert help developing their apps for Nokia phones. XenZu has also found success through the Qt developer tools.

 


The XENOZU YouTube player initially began as a side project, conceived by XenZu Founder and CEO Vlad Zubarev, as a way to teach some of his software engineers techniques for developing Symbian applications. XENOZU was conceived with the aim of creating a better user experience for viewing YouTube videos on mobile phones - and he wanted to share that experience with other Nokia users.

 


 

Discoverability is the highlight of the XENOZU player. All of the core YouTube search options and features are incorporated into the app. Users can search by video categories, including: Featured, Most Viewed, Most Recent, Top Rated, including the basic search functionality expected from YouTube. You can also bookmark a video, view the history of the videos you've watched and get additional video details.

Zubarev says his engineers who were learning to develop for Symbian originally created the app using native Symbian C++ code and the YouTube public API. Now that the app has become popular with users around the world, however, Zubarev also notes that the company is exploring the possibility of porting the app to Qt, specifically looking at the possibility of getting HD quality videos via HTML5 through QtWebKit.

 


 

"There's a Qt/QML version of the app coming soon," said Vlad Zubarev, Founder and CEO of XenZu. "We've been using Qt/QML quite heavily in other projects. Certainly Qt and especially QML is a significant step forward for us, specifically when it comes to creating the UI - we have found it's much easier to create even complex UI and user experiences with Qt/QML technologies. Also, Qt provides a rich enough API which allows creating cross platform apps for the platforms supporting Qt and there is always an ability to use Symbian native API if you want to do something very specific."

 


 

Zubarev's knowledge and appreciation for Qt stems in part from his life-long desire to become a successful software engineer. He started learning to program in C (and later in C++) while attending secondary school in his hometown of Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia. One day, while attending a class on business and entrepreneurship, the professor challenged everyone in the class to set a life goal for themselves. Zubarev's life goal for years has been to start his own software development company. After years of work, including college and many years employed at a variety of jobs, Zubarev fulfilled his dream by founding XenZu 17 years after that life-changing class in secondary school.

As the company has created a wide range of apps for multiple companies, Zubarev has a great deal of insight into the merits of developing on different platforms. "Compared to other handset manufacturers, working with the Nokia business folks and engineers is a pleasure. Symbian, as a mature platform has one of the richest sets of APIs compared to other platforms for all the aspects of application development: camera, telephony, VoIP, OpenGL, etc., and the introduction of Qt/QML make the UI development easy and fun."

He adds, "The most exciting part about making our apps available in Ovi Store is the ability to reach millions of users with the implementation of our idea and in a relatively short time. It's amazing to realize that just a few months back the app was just an idea, but now millions of users worldwide use and appreciate the result of our efforts." Zubarev also mentions that the XENOZU app was launched with minimal marketing efforts - the app has succeeded in Ovi Store entirely on the quality of its design and performance.

XENOZU YouTube player is free to download and is compatible on all Nokia Symbian and New Symbian phones in over 190 markets worldwide. For a complete overview of all XenZu apps, visit Ovi Store. 

 

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