Nokia Publisher Successes

100 million downloads is one big achievement. How big? Watch this video to find out!

Why all this fuss about 100 million? Because UTV Indiagames, Pico Brothers, and Inode Entertainment have become the first developers to each achieve 100 million downloads on Nokia Store!

Their successes show that even small businesses can achieve big results. They also show that Nokia Store can deliver serious results for developers from around the world. Indiagames, based in Mumbai, started with just 5 people (though it has since grown to 350 staff and is now part of Disney). Pico Brothers of Finland is still staffed by just two men -- not really brothers -- and a dog, Viggo. And Inode of Mexico has a staff of only 10 developers.

Indiagames, the first company to reach 100 million downloads on Nokia Store, has found a winning formula with localised content on a wide range of Nokia devices. The company’s popular games include Ra.One Genesis, IPL Cricket Fever, and Monster Truck Dash. Indiagames is now developing apps for Nokia’s latest Asha Touch devices.

Watch this video with Indiagames founder Vishal Gondal.

Read how Indiagames was first to reach 100 million downloads.

Pico Brothers, second to reach the 100-million mark, have succeeded in part by extensively using Qt, which lets the two developers create new apps in as little as a few hours. Pico Brothers’ popular offerings include YouTube Downloader, Flashlight Extreme, and Milk the Cow. They are now expanding by localising apps and monetising their work with both paid apps and in-app advertising.

Watch a video on Pico Brothers’ road to 100 million downloads:

Read how Pico Brothers joined the 100 million club.

Inode Entertainment, our third developer to pass 100 million downloads, has, in just six years, become one of Mexico’s most successful mobile developers. The company’s apps include Ming Zhu, Esquadron 201, and Monster Truck Challenge. Inode monetizes its work with both paid apps and in-app advertising. The company’s apps run on Nokia Series 40 and Symbian phones, and its developers are now creating Windows Phone apps for Nokia’s latest Lumia devices.

Read how Inode Entertainment hit 100 million downloads.

Who will be next to pass the 100 million downloads milestone? As they say on TV, stay tuned!

Earlier in the year, we chronicled the success of IndiaGames and Pico Brothers. Today, we’re happy to add Inode Entertainment to the list of developers who have achieved the one hundred million download milestone via Nokia Store.

It all started in 2006 when Jaime Enriquez decided to apply his passion for gaming to mobile handsets and applications. Since then, his company has grown to ten developers who share his passion for app development. One of the first publishers in the Nokia Store during its inception, Inode Entertainment is now one of the most successful development companies in Mexico.

One of Inode’s most successful applications, Ming Zhu, is a puzzle game that has been deemed the “Sudoku killer.” Players can spend hours challenging their brainpower and the brainpower of fellow users in this free game. This app, along with others like Escuadron, Monster Truck, and Race Electrix, appeals to a broad demographic and continues to surprise customers. Enriquez and his staff pride themselves on customizing themes and applications for their fans. Through stellar customer service and the support of their local Nokia team for quick solutions and training, Inode Entertainment has built a profitable company with a loyal following.

While Inode Entertainment offers paid versions of their apps, they monetize their apps primarily through in-app advertising supported by Nokia.

“The in-app advertising platforms provided by Nokia are great for both developers and users. They enable us to make our applications available to the masses while providing us a good fill rate and an impressive eCPM,” according to Jaime Enriquez, Founder and CEO of Inode Entertainment. “We are happy with our revenue success and are able to pay employee salaries through the revenue generated from our applications.”

At Inode Entertainment, they believe in a company atmosphere that encourages dreaming big and working hard. And with a hundred million downloads under their belt, they’re now aiming for the one billion mark. With a portfolio that spans Symbian, Series 40, S60, and Symbian 3 (and soon Windows Phone), they expect to achieve their goal with hard work and determination, as well as Nokia’s global reach.

“Nokia has the best developer program in the industry, and we know we can reach above and beyond the status quo with their help,”said Jaime Enriquez. “With a portfolio that spans gaming, productivity, tools, and personalization, we are proud of our success. Our partnership with Nokia has enabled my hard working team to achieve this milestone.”

After reaching the handsets of gamers all over the world on Symbian, Series 40, and S60 phones, Inode Entertainment is looking forward to developing for the growing Windows Phone Marketplace.

“We are extremely excited about the Nokia and Microsoft partnership and are in the process of developing several applications for Nokia Lumia smartphones and the Windows Phone Marketplace,” said Jaime Enriquez. “We are big fans of Microsoft’s development tools and believe that Nokia has the most impressive global reach. That winning combination enables us to reach our very ambitious goals for the future.”

What do you do for an encore after your mobile app has already been downloaded more than 11 million times? If you are Psiloc, the Warsaw, Poland-based developer of the World Traveler app for Nokia phones, you develop a new version for Nokia’s just-announced Asha Touch phones -- the Nokia Asha 305, Asha 306, and Asha 311.  

‘It was an easy decision for us’, says Wojciech Nowanski, Operations Director at Psiloc. ‘We want to be on as many Nokia devices as possible and to reach as many consumers as possible.’ 

World Traveler, one of several popular apps offered by Psiloc on Nokia Store, offers both business and leisure travelers an all-in-one suite of free mobile services: global weather forecasts, currency conversions, and a world clock. In addition, World Traveler users have the option of purchasing two premium services: Flight Assistant, which lets them search the flight schedules of major airlines for information on flight delays and other changes; and Safe, which lets them securely store sensitive numbers in a ‘virtual vault’.  

World Traveler was originally developed six years ago, after Psiloc executives found themselves stuck in a Hong Kong airport, waiting for a delayed flight to Hamburg. ‘There was no information about what was going on with the plane’, Nowanski explains. ‘So we decided to create such an app for travelers.’ 

Then, about three years ago, Psiloc added new features to World Traveler and ported the native C++ app first to Nokia’s Symbian 3rd Edition, then to Symbian 5th Edition, and then to Symbian Belle. With that, the app has, well, taken off. In addition to the afore-mentioned 11+ million downloads, World Traveler now has approximately 2.1 million users who rely on it every day. In addition, Psiloc earns revenue whenever users opt for the app’s premium services. 

To move World Traveler to the new Nokia Asha Touch phones, Psiloc has essentially recreated the app in a new development environment. The new Asha Touch phones are designed around Nokia’s Series 40 Developer Platform 2.0, so Psiloc’s development team opted to create the new version of World Traveler in Java. 

The Java version of World Traveler took Psiloc about four months to develop, and the work was done by a small team of developers. Psiloc’s developers were pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to do using the Nokia SDK 2.0 for Java. The Light Weight UI Toolkit (LWUIT) helped them speed development by offering a wide range of UI-ready components and the Java APIs let them offer rich applications. They also made use of the emulator included in the SDK and the settings to test in-app purchasing.

Watch this video to find out more about Psiloc’s experience developing for the new Asha Touch devices:

The Asha Touch version of World Traveler initially offers the most popular free services of the Symbian version: a world clock showing local time for specified locations; currency conversions for nearly 185 currencies; and the premium Flight Assistance service, available using Nokia’s in-app purchase service. Psiloc is also prepared to offer other free and premium services to the app’s Asha Touch version in the future. ‘We will watch how the market responds, and then we will decide which other features to move’, Nowanski says. 

World Traveler for Nokia Asha Touch phones will be offered on Nokia Store in 18 global languages, among them French (both European and Canadian), Italian, Portuguese (both European and Brazilian), Russian, Spanish, and Ukrainian. With the Asha Touch phones playing an important role in Nokia’s campaign to reach the next billion consumers, that should create quite an encore.

While learning the ropes of parenthood, Anthony Ramirez and his wife figured there had to be an easier way to keep track of their baby’s important activities. In an attempt to monitor and organize all of their little one’s interactions, they developed their first Windows Phone app under Coquisoft LLC.

Though there are various parenting apps on the market, ParentAssist is differentiated by its fully customizable settings. Parents can track feedings, diaper changes, sleeping patterns, reactions to different solid foods and all things baby. It allows them to keep tabs on multiple children at once, keep a daily journal and produce activity summaries and detail reports.

ParentAssist was built by a small team with very limited resources and experience with mobile apps, but they found that developing on the Windows Phone platform was intuitive. “I very much enjoy developing on the Windows Phone platform. The emulator is superfast and deploying to a device is just as easy. The API is easy to use and in general it’s a lot of fun,” said Anthony Ramirez, Owner, Coquisoft LLC.

Over the course of one year, the two-person (part-time) team spent time learning new technologies, architecting the system, designing the UX/Icons, coding, testing and preparing for deployment. Their goal was to provide users with the information they need in as few clicks as possible. Anthony’s wife, Donatella, who is not a developer by trade, took on the UX aspect as she has a natural eye for design. To create the icons and panorama image, she used Expression Design, which she found easy to learn. Anthony worked on the back-end, using the following:

•    Windows Azure for the ability to scale as needed
•    SQL Azure for robust, cloud data storage
•    Windows Access Control Service to allow users to authenticate using social media and e-mail platforms
•    Telerik Windows Phone controls to provide a professional look and feel
•    Nokia’s networking, notification and isolated storage systems

The app is available in English in nearly all countries that Windows Marketplace serves for $3.99 with an offer for a free 7-day, full feature trial. ParentAssist users are a hyper-engaged group of consumers, typically logging into the app seven to eight times per day to log activities. Customer reviews are extremely positive to-date:

The ParentAssist team is extremely optimistic about the app’s possibilities and intends to develop more Windows Phone apps, particularly for Nokia phones. “Nokia to us means cutting edge design and high quality. Associating our app and brand with Nokia is fantastic. I also love that Metro is a completely different design language/UX and allows you to provide a solution that looks and feel fresh compared to what is currently available,” said Ramirez.

To learn more about Coquisoft LLC’s ParentAssist app, checkout the video below:  

 

Nokia’s Lumia 710, Lumia 800 and Lumia 900 phones have garnered a tremendous amount of buzz since their launch. Recognizing the opportunity to create addictive, interactive apps on the Windows Phone platform, FourBros Studio, with the help of Nokia, has turned their indie game into a lucrative business. [Read their blog here.]

In 2011, FourBros Studio created Taptitude. The free Windows Phone application is a collection of more than sixty games in which players test their skills to ultimately collect coveted star awards. With new games added every week, there’s an endless opportunity for capturing the attention of new consumers.  The app also features online leaderboards, weekly redeem riddles for the chance to win prizes and an integrated cross-game reward system where players earn coins in one game to buy upgrades in another.

The developers leveraged Windows Phone OS features such as Multitouch and Accelerometer input, social sharing and pinned tiles so that each game is pinned to the start screen of the app for easy access.

Taptitude uses an in-app advertising model, meaning FourBros collects revenue based on the number of daily impressions via the app. In just over a year, they’re nearing 100 million ad impressions – with the majority of momentum in the last few months.    

“We chose Windows Phone because we saw it as a platform that is poised for rapid growth,” said Brandon Furtwangler of FourBros. “We’re extremely excited to see Nokia embracing Windows Phone, and we’re already starting to see the impact of the Nokia/Microsoft partnership paying off.”

Submitting to Windows Phone Marketplace has also been a smooth process for FourBros. With the platform’s quick turn-around time for approval, the developers have been able to maintain updates every week to dozens of countries around the world. The App Hub portal has also proven to be beneficial by giving them access to all the ratings from players around the world, thus providing valuable feedback for continued improvements to the app.

With the launch of Nokia Lumia smartphones in the U.S. market, developers like FourBros Studio have seen a dramatic jump in downloads, impressions and revenue. Currently, there are over 300,000 Taptitude players; and FourBros has already earned $34,000 just in the month of April. Furthermore, FourBros note that Nokia Lumia 710, Lumia 800 and Lumia 900 are emerging as leading traffic drivers among a great selection of other Windows Phones.

The developers believe their success is attributed to their ability to evolve according the rapidly changing gaming landscape. “At FourBros Studio, we’ve adopted an evolving game model where we continuously delight our users with weekly updates, said Furtwangler. “This allows us to react to changes in the market and take advantage of new circumstances as they unfold, such as the launch of the Nokia Lumia 900.”

In the last two months, FourBros saw more than 50,000 unique players using Nokia devices, which represents a third of all their players during that time frame. FourBros’s preliminary analysis shows that Nokia provides them with access to a global user base. FourBros Studio receives an average of one million ad impressions and earns revenue of over $1,000 daily. “The rate of growth is staggering, and it just goes to show that the Windows Phone Platform is on the rise.”