Nokia Publisher Successes

When working with Nokia, a publishing company does not have to be large in order to be successful. This week, we focus on the success of two people who never gave up on their passion for developing applications, and worked with Nokia to make their vision a reality.

Unique Designs for All: IND190 Success Story

In 2008, Ramadhan Bach wanted to download a new theme for his Symbian phone. Frustrated by the lack of options available at that time, he decided to create his own design, and he never looked back. After developing his first theme, Bach shared it with other Nokia enthusiasts with the same appetite for creative designs for Symbian phones. Bach published themes on his personal blog, where they gained momentum for years before he heeded the words of encouragement from his peers to start his own app development business. The result is IND190, a company that offers customers themes for a variety of Symbian Phones.

Since founding IND190 in 2011, Bach has experienced tremendous success. Only one year after first publishing free and paid versions of Bach’s themes in the Nokia Store, IND190 has garnered more than 26 million downloads across 190 countries. IND190 continues to release unique, high quality themes that enable Nokia users to personalize their Series 40, S60 and Symbian phones.

“Thanks to the Nokia Store and the hard work of my four team members, my personal hobby has now become a globally successful business,” said Ramadhan Bach, Engineer and Founder of IND190. “We look forward to exploring the Windows Phone platform with personalization applications and reaching a new group of Nokia users who are passionate about design and style.”

With their company and momentum growing by the day because of consistent release of new authentic content, IND190 and Bach are making big plans to expand into new markets to reach Windows Phone customers. They also hope to use Nokia’s tools to help increase monetization and gain more revenue in the years to come through in-app advertising.

One theme in particular is getting a lot of attention from both consumers and smartphone enthusiasts. Available globally for only 1 Euro in the Nokia Store, IND190’s Chrome is a series of themes developed that offer 100% scalable vector graphics compatible with S60 and Symbian Anna. Receiving five stars in the Nokia Store, the application has already impressed customers who have called the application “one of the best” among a variety of personal theme options because of its originality.

“Users like the ability to customize their phone, and our Chrome theme makes all the difference,” said Ramadhan Bach. “We are continuing to push the envelope in developing for our customers and look forward to publishing fresh and unique themes for the new Nokia Windows Phones in the near future.”

More information on Ramadhan Bach and IND190 can be found on their website and in the Nokia Store.

The Adventures of DreamGamez

Ramizuddin Shaikh knows how to write his own adventure. In 2010, he set out with a vision to create fun games and applications for the masses through his one-man company, DreamGamez. In an attempt to reach more people in more locations, Ramizuddin made the decision to develop for Nokia Series 40. The result was the Adventure of Ted, a gaming application that has been downloaded more than 20 million times in 190 countries. Handling everything from design to publishing, Ramizuddin leverages Nokia’s easy to use platforms and powerful developer community to develop fun and creative applications that appeal to a global audience. After its debut in 2012, Adventure of Ted was ranked as the number one top free game in the Nokia Store for more than a month in the US, UK and India.

As expected, Ramizuddin’s success was not without a few roadblocks.  As an independent developer, Ramizuddin knew he had to create an application that would stand out. He wanted to develop an application for feature phones that would find the perfect balance between quality and performance while also offering easy scrolling and high quality graphics. The result was a free application with smooth gameplay available on a variety of phones.

“It’s a challenge for an individual developer like me to reach a broad base of customers with a new application,” said Ramizuddin Shaikh, developer and founder of DreamGamez. “The Nokia Store’s global reach helped me showcase my high quality, unique application with gamers all over the world.”

With a successful Series 40 application under his belt, Ramizuddin is determined to embark on a new adventure: developing for Windows Phone. The rapid growth of the platform along with the intuitive developer tools has convinced Ramizuddin to publish all of his upcoming applications to the new platform.

“Nokia provides everything you need for development,” said Shaikh. “I look forward to exploring Windows Phone and seeing my download numbers continue to grow.”

Established in 1992, Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP) is a premier tertiary institution that offers quality education in Information Technology, Engineering, Design, Interactive & Digital Media, Chemical & Life Sciences, Business Management and Health Sciences. More specifically, the Centre for IT Innovation (CITI) within the institution, partners with the industry to develop cutting-edge projects. As part of their coursework, Nanyang Polytechnic’s students from the Mobile Inno Sphere Centre are fully immersed in the research and development of mobile computing initiatives, including mobile application development. To date, Nanyang Polytechnic’s students have published 41 applications on the Nokia Store, reaching more than two million downloads across multiple platforms.

One of the recent -developed apps, ShakePicPro provides consumers with a quick and innovative   way to share images with friends just by shaking the phone. “We identified improvements that could be made to the current way smartphone owners share images today,” said Lecturer and lead designer Leow Zhen Zhen. “Conventional methods of image sharing between devices include using Bluetooth, email and MMS. These methods are often troublesome as they require devices to be paired or connected to an existing WiFi infrastructure.” The ShakePicPro application, on the other hand, is easy to use and compatible on Qt and Symbian phones.
  
ShakePicPro was chosen to be developed for Nokia because of the company’s substantial global consumer base, market potential and the helpful technical support they could call on during the application development process. Nokia offered developer support through various programs including Nokia Developer Launchpad, and Nokia Developer for Universities. Students were even able to access Nokia experts through technical discussion boards. After providing assistance in the early stages of app development, Nokia also helped the students achieve success in the Nokia Store with merchandising and marketing support to ensure their apps were exposed to a wider global audience.   NYP student Nicholas Chan noted, “I am thankful to Nanyang Polytechnic and Nokia for the precious opportunity and the great guidance and support provided to me in many ways. I am glad that I can experience the entire application development process, from design, development, publishing and eventually marketing my own applications. I am proud to be able to showcase my work in the Nokia Store and get real consumer feedback and downloads from the huge consumer base worldwide.”

ShakePicPro, is a free application that has already garnered more than one million downloads on Symbian and Nokia N9 phones. The team is now looking to expand onto the Windows Phone platform to increase its reach globally.

This past December, Nokia and NYP collaborated in a Windows Phone development program where 30 students participated in a 2 day Windows Phone CodeCamp workshop with the intention to develop and publish 15 Windows Phone applications by mid-2012. Currently, there are 12 applications created by NYP students in the Windows Phone Marketplace. Among these applications, Mind Reader is an interesting application for children. It couples a unique feature with directional sensor capability on Windows Phone to create a fun game for consumers of all ages.

“Developing for the Windows Phone platform is a pleasant experience,” said Zhen Zhen, who is also a Nokia Developer Champion and Nokia Developer Certified Trainer in the Nokia Developer Consultancy Network “Microsoft Visual Studio is a great tool, because we find it’s familiar to most developers. We are able to train students and quickly gear them with the necessary competencies to turn their ideas into innovative mobile solutions.”

To learn more about ShakePicPro, visit: http://support.citi.edu.sg/shakepicpro.html

A simple, addictive, action-packed game is the most recent release from one of Nokia’s most successful developers, UTV Indiagames. Along with a slew of other applications, Monster Truck Dash has helped UTV IndiaGames exceed 91 million downloads across 190 countries to date. UTV Indiagames is among the 350 developers to have driven more than 1 million downloads each via Nokia Store. 

Monster Truck Dash is available at a cost of1 Euro for Nokia Series 40 and S60 phones. The app leverages Nokia’s networking and social connect technology to create a high-powered game in which users challenge their friends and family to monster truck races on visually engaging courses. The result is an action-packed and challenging experience that users can share with their friends.

“We are thrilled to have crossed the 90 million download mark in the Nokia Store. It is an exciting and proud moment for the team,” said Vishal Gondal, CEO of UTV Indiagames. “The Nokia Store has opened up avenues for us to successfully exhibit and sell a variety of applications, and we have managed to hit this tremendous milestone in just two short years.  Overall, our partnership with Nokia is helping to take our applications to the next level in India and beyond.”

UTV Indiagames develops Java apps for use on a wide range of Nokia Series 40 and S60 devices, and they often include in-app advertising. Available on more than 138 Nokia devices, UTV IndiaGames offers a variety of games and applications that appeal to various demographics. The company offers  100 paid apps and over 300 free ad-supported apps, giving customers an enormous range of choices, while also monetizing their content.

Founded in 1999 with a five member team, UTV Indiagames now employs more than 300 employees and is India’s benchmark mobile and online games company, as well as a leading global mobile game publisher.

UTV Indiagames’ success over the years has not gone unnoticed, with the company winning several industry awards in 2009 and 2010: The Maharashtra Information Technology Award 2009, the IDC Enterprise Innovation Awards 2010, the Movers & Shakers 2010 award, the FICCI BAF Award for Mobile Gaming 2010, and the application Brucelee Dragon Warrior winning the People’s Choice Award at IMGA 2010.

UTV Indiagames continues to be a company to watch, especially given their plans to expand their app developments their apps to the Windows Phone platform. With a focus on Windows Phone Marketplace, UTV Indiagames is in the process of developing their first cricket game. Useful tools available within Nokia’s developer community will help enable UTV Indiagames’ success across multiple platforms, allowing them to reach even more users with their fun and socially interactive games.  Nokia is proud to be a part of UTV Indiagames’ mobile publishing success.

Twist Mobile was founded in India in 2009 with a clear approach to winning over the emerging and international markets. With a wealth of content making its way to India, the Twist team decided to develop apps for their home country while letting others focus on the U.S. market. However, the team was faced with a challenge most developers encounter, how do I grow my company and generate revenue?

“We started out by developing our first application Age Effect, an old-age photo effect app, using Java for Symbian phones. It received a good number of paid downloads from operators in national and international markets, but we wanted to really look at how we could further drive success,” explained Virat Khutal, Twist Mobile Founder & CEO.

By partnering with Nokia, Twist Mobile changed their business model from a paid download model to an ad-funded model. The two teams worked together to design a user interface that would make the ad placement a less intrusive element of the user experience. The Twist team also found it easy to integrate the advertising SDK into their apps, enabling them to push out apps to the market quickly. The model with ad-wrapping from Vserv Ad Engine displays ads at the beginning and end of each application, and doesn’t distract users as they engage with the app. The ROI of this model is $3.50 USD per every 1,000 impressions and Twist brings in roughly $1,000 USD in daily revenue.

In this Nokia Developer video, Twist Mobile's CEO Virat Khutal and Technical Head Pramod Pandey talk about their success developing with Nokia:

Developing for Nokia was always the team’s first preference, given Nokia’s global reach, local support and penetration in the Indian market. Twist Mobile has developed for other platforms, but is committed to developing for the Java™ platform and Nokia phones. “We have experimented on some other platforms but distribution was a key challenge so we stopped those plans,” said Anirudh Parasher, Twist Mobile Deployment Manager.

Once Age Effect launched in the Nokia Store as a free ad-funded app, it received one million downloads in just six weeks; a huge achievement for the team fueled by the new business model. This set the tone for developing more apps in the Nokia Store to maximize revenue and profit share, so the momentum didn’t stop there. Soon after, the team launched Psycho Hunter, a personality analysis game, that generated one million downloads in the Nokia Store in just 15 days!

As a result of the successful new strategy, Twist Mobile was the first company from the Asia-Pacific region to surpass 10+ million downloads in the Nokia Store with more than 30 free and 10 paid apps available for download. The company has surpassed 25 million downloads in six months, with more than 120,000 downloads a day from the Nokia Store – without investing in any promotional marketing.

The company received more than eight million downloads from their camera apps alone including, Sketch Effect, Age Effect and Photopia. “We wanted to harness camera technology, motion sensors and all other accessory features to give our user a great experience,” said Khutal.

The team is excited to take on developing for Nokia Lumia smartphones running on Windows Phone. The Twist Mobile team is made up of 18 developers and designers, with growth plans to reach 35 people in the next three months.

With Nokia’s global reach, Twist predicts that Windows Phone will emerge as the biggest player in the space by attracting a younger consumer market through the integration of Xbox and their ability to handle games at 60 frames per second. Khutal added, “We have aspirations to reach one million downloads per day and we’re fully confident we can get there with our free and paid apps.”

To learn more about Twist Mobile’s apps, check out the breakdown below:

Psycho Hunter
   
Category: Games - Action
Downloads: 2.1 Million
Description: A simple game of deer hunt with a personality analysis tool for calculating and understanding your behavior and game play techniques.

Sketch Effect
   

Category: Apps - Entertainment
Downloads: 2 Million
Description:Take any photo from your mobile camera and quickly convert it into a sketch. The Sketch Effect app lets you share your sketch with your friends on Facebook so you can have a different profile picture, or set it as your wallpaper on your device.

Photopia
  
Category: Apps - Entertainment
Downloads: 2 Million
Description: A global photo-sharing application that applies effects to your photos and lets you share them worldwide.You can also see photos from other users and rate them, comment on them, or follow them.

In September 2011, India-based CellApp began to gain exposure as a ‘recommended app’ in the Nokia Store, sparking millions of downloads of their content in 190 countries around the world. One of CellApp’s first applications was the widely popular QTorch, an application designed to let users of Nokia Symbian phones turn their device into a torch or flashlight when the need arises.

CellApp developed QTorch – including a Qt-based version of the app - specifically to address emergency situations that leave people without power for extended periods of time. The app uses a custom algorithm to increase the brightness of the phone screen as necessary. To date, the free version of the application has been downloaded 1.7 million times, earning recognition as a “most downloaded” app for the Nokia N8.

Using feedback from Nokia Store customers, CellApp has since moved on to create other successful applications, including DataMonitor, which measures traffic through network connections and displays real-time data usage information. In nearly every market, operators can charge users for data overages. With DataMonitor, users can keep track of their data consumption in real time from the home screen and set alerts to sound as they approach their data limit. This app has helped several hundred thousand users decrease mobile bills. The free version allows users to monitor GPRS data usage, and the premium application allows them to configure and position the ticker window, set a usage alert, and select the network to be monitored (GPRS/Wi-Fi). User testimonials in Nokia Store have showered the app with compliments:

“I have been getting huge bills for using GPRS data connectivity while on the move. With DataMonitor I hope to have some control over my phone bills. Good going! - rahulg_85

“Useful app to know exactly how much you download!” - enzodamato

“DataMonitor helped me to find hidden online costs!” - quax_ge

CellApp was established in 2010 by developers with experience creating applications in Symbian C++, Qt, Java, Nokia’s Web Runtime, Series 40 Web Apps, and Adobe Flash Lite.

“When using Qt, we found it very easy to develop the user interface, and the development time can be virtually cut in half,” said G. Padmakumar, CEO of CellApp. “Qt has a drag and drop UI editor, which incorporates many tools that help in our rapid application development.”

Many of the developers working at CellApp have been working with Nokia platforms for years; and they have recently developed five applications in the Windows Phone Marketplace – in just four weeks.

“For us, it was simple and a great experience developing on WP7, from installing the SDKs and IDEs to transferring the app to the test devices, to uploading the final application to App Hub for publication in the Windows Phone Marketplace,” said Padmakumar. “Help is just a click away and there are developer champions all over the world contributing to the community by posting code-based articles for additional support. With Microsoft slowly opening up the development platform so that complex apps can be developed, it’s only a matter of time before WP development will become the mobile developers’ favorite.”

Windows Phone Marketplace is home to more than 65,000 apps, and counting including the five from CellApp, and is seeing more than 300 new apps published every day. CellApp plans to explore the Windows Phone platform to create more globally relevant applications and is taking advantage of the fast-growing and increasingly popular third ecosystem.

“Innovate, adapt, excel,” said Padmakumar. “Our motto has been a guiding light for our endeavors and will continue to inspire us to work with Nokia for years to come.”