Nokia Publisher Successes

Nitrio, a company focused on the design and development of mobile entertainment, was established in Malaysia in 2006. The team of five creates Java games, personalized themes, screensavers, wallpapers and video ringtones for Nokia phones. They also craft utility widget apps, web apps and Java games.

At an average app release rate of 10-30 apps per month, Nitrio has published more than 300 apps in the Nokia Store to date, reaching more than 190 countries and five million individual consumers. “We joined the Nokia Store at its inception and we’ve seen our download numbers steadily increase every day,” said Tan Chia Ling, Nitro CEO. “We’re also very excited about the new Asha family of Series 40 phones that Nokia introduced at Nokia World.”

The company is now focused on Series 40 development including Java games and web apps, and will also develop additional personalization contents such as theme, wallpaper, ringtone. Two of Nitrio’s most successful pieces of content to date are the Carbon Theme and Glass Apple Theme. The company recently submitted two Java games and one Series 40 web app to the “Create for Millions” contest. The apps included Sky Venture, Star Planet and Health Planner.

Carbon Theme

The Nitrio Carbon Theme fits seamlessly on a Nokia smartphone’s screen, and includes a free analog clock screensaver for compatible devices. Once installed, the theme will automatically work in a consumer’s language. Application features include:

●            Downloaded as a Nokia theme

●            Unique high quality wallpaper design

●            Perfectly matched highlight, soft key and 3D buttons

●            Bonus screensaver for compatible devices

Glass Apple Theme

Another elegant theme, Nitrio’s Glass Apple features 3D buttons designed to fit the smartphone screen. The application gives consumers the ability to personalize their phone with unique, high quality wallpaper, 3D style touch buttons and beautiful colors.

Nitrio App Design

The Nitrio team developed their Nokia apps using CarbideUI, Adobe Flash Lite Scalable Vector Graphics and Scalable Vector Graphics. Specifically, they used Adobe Flash Lite to create games, animated wallpaper and screensavers that are interactive and fun for consumers to use.

For Nitrio, the most challenging part of app development is the time consuming process for developing a new game or theme from scratch. It can also be complicated to adopt new technologies and work on new platforms. However, according to Tan Chia Ling, “The Nokia publishing tool is easy to use and helps us publish content to the Nokia Store very quickly. The company’s free Symbian content signing has also helped us reduce development costs across the board.”  

Nitro’s apps are available globally on Nokia Series 40 mobile phones, Nokia S60 and Symbian^3 smartphones. Occasionally the company reviews older applications, adds new supported devices and updates their apps to reduce the price. Through those efforts, the company has seen the number of downloads steadily increase by hundreds per day.

“I really enjoy working with Nokia on graphics and design that change the look and feel of a consumer’s mobile phone,” concluded Tan Chia Ling. 

This past March, a team of four young developers in Romania entered the mobile app world with the debut of their first free app, Fillr. Developed in only three days and launched at their local Qt Developer Contest sponsored by Nokia, Fillr is an addictive, colorful and engaging game with the goal to fill as many objects as you can with Fillr characters of the same color in a limited number of moves.

Users can play in single player mode or compete in a multiplayer mode against the computer or an online player. The game comes with three themes to choose from, three maps with over 20 levels, and an unlimited number of custom levels built by Fillr community members all over the world.  

Fillr Development and Results

Fillr is available for Qt-enabled Nokia phones including Symbian^3, Symbian Anna, Symbian Belle and Meego. “The Qt SDK is simply the best tool on the market and offers a large variety of instruments to develop any kind of application in a very short amount of time,” said Loloiu Cristian, Co-Founder and Developer, Fill Apps.

The Fill App team had no previous experience developing mobile applications and was taught how to develop with Qt in just two days. The team developed Fillr using QML, a great language to create animations. “I think QML is the best option if you want to quickly create highly dynamic and touch enabled user interfaces with fluid transitions and effects that improves the user experience.” explained Irinel Barbalata, Co-Founder and Developer, Fill Apps. “Qt has an assortment of components, so the time spent writing code is greatly reduced.” The transition from developing for Symbian to Meego was very easy for the group and took only a few hours since it didn’t require any rewriting of code.

As fresh mobile app developers, the team chose to develop for Nokia devices because of Nokia’s global reach and dedication to the developer community. “Our experience developing for the Nokia Store was great. The publishing interface is easy to understand and simple to use, and the developer support team is great and always willing to help anytime you have a problem,” said Cristian. The Fill Apps team also engages the Nokia support team through the developer discussion boards as well as the @NokiaDeveloper Twitter handle and Facebook developer group page to receive real-time support and advice.

“Nokia really cares about developers offering them everything they need, from technical support and devices to test the applications, to a large and helpful community,” said Cristian.

Fill Apps just launched a new version of game for the holidays called Fillr Winter Edition and is now available in the Nokia Store.

In 1994 when ZingMagic started, the primary mobile device was a Psion Series 3 PDA, Palm had yet to release their PDA devices and Symbian hadn’t even been developed. With only a handful of part-time developers creating third-party applications for mobile devices, founder John Holloway concluded there was a significant business opportunity. With two friends, John set up what later became ZingMagic to focus on creating mobile-optimized versions of classic board, card and strategy games, such as Chess, Backgammon and Bridge.

Seventeen years later, ZingMagic is an award-winning company with a portfolio of more than 20 different apps across major smartphone platforms. In 2002, the company was awarded the first ever BAFTA in the Interactive Entertainment, Mobile Games Division for their Chess app on early Symbian-based phones. Their Chess app also won an award for the best Handango game in 2003, and ZingMagic were awarded Symbian Developer of the Year in 2008 by Handango.

ZingMagic originally built classic board, card and strategy games because of their universal appeal. The developers wanted to enable others to share their passion for the games by making mobile versions available and easy to use. Writing the artificial intelligence for these applications was a challenging feat, but ZingMagic’s success is apparent in their latest product, Chess V, which has garnered nearly one million downloads in 190 countries.
   

An ancient game, modern experience

With Chess V, ZingMagic set out to create the most powerful, user-friendly chess game on any platform that challenges skill levels ranging from beginning to expert.

To that end, the developers created more than 20 different skill levels in which consumers can compete. They also gave users the option to play against the clock or to play at their own pace. Chess V features sophisticated graphics with choices of boards and piece sets, as well as hints and tips to improve the players’ skills.

The challenge and the magic of developing

The artificial intelligence engines that power all of ZingMagic’s applications are built with standard C/C++. This means the application engines can be ported rapidly, efficiently and usually without change to most other smartphone platforms. This ensures the integrity of the game engine is maintained across all platforms and the experience remains relatively unchanged to the user. The user interface is written in the most appropriate environment for the target device; for example, Symbian OS for Symbian devices.

The development process for games like Chess V is never-ending—there are always improvements to be made. Since development began in 1994, John estimates that 10 years of developer time have gone into the Chess engine. However, the engines are not written from scratch for each platform. It typically takes three to six months of developer time to port an engine, write the UI and optimize any engine performance for that new platform.

“Software development remains an intellectual challenge throwing up new problems to solve on an almost daily basis,” says John. “The thrill of creating an application today burns as brightly as it did when any of us wrote our first application.  Putting all those 1 and 0’s to good use, even if it’s ‘only a game’ still seems magical.”

To date, ZingMagic has achieved 5M downloads in Nokia Store from consumers in 216 countries. Providing free, advertiser-supported versions (ad-funded) has played a valuable role in raising the company’s profile among users. The advertisements that display across all ZingMagic apps on Nokia Symbian smartphones result in about 600,000 impressions per day. The company also generates reasonable revenue from paid versions of their apps.

Laurentiu Taropa is a man of many trades, working as both an entrepreneur and a developer in the mobile space. Inspired by his son’s love for discovery, he started the company Intellsys 10 years ago as a consulting and custom software development company. In 2002, Laurentiu became interested in software development for mobile phones, and wrote his first application, “Argus Remote Surveillance,” for the Nokia 3650. What was at first a hobby soon turned into a passion and business opportunity, as his first application was nominated as a finalist in the Business Category at the Forum Nokia S60 3rd Edition Challenge. As Laurentiu continued to find success, he decided to continue developing apps for the Nokia community, and later renamed the application “Live2Phone Mobile Surveillance,” compatible with the entire Symbian range.

With his new-found love for app development, Laurentiu created the Qt-based HDR Photo Camera app that captures amazing, high resolution images on Nokia smartphones. The HDR Photo Camera captures three successive frames at different exposure levels, a technique known as “bracketing,” and uses exposure fusion technology to select relevant elements to combine these frames, resulting in unique and crystal clear images. Other features include bracketing at different exposure levels, manual and auto focus options, a configurable UI and a photo gallery. The application has been designed and developed for the latest touch screen smartphones, specifically the Nokia N8. The dynamic application is also compatible with all other Symbian^3 devices, including the Nokia E7, Nokia C7, Nokia C6-01, as well as with the N97 and the N97 Mini.

HDR’s development and success

At Intellsys, Laurentiu works with a small but highly qualified team to develop the code for each application. A small company that cannot afford to hire an extensive staff, Intellsys uses the Nokia Developer website to gauge how consumers are using their applications, and how they can improve. The global pervasiveness of the Nokia Store also provides Intellsys with exposure and mainstream reach that they would otherwise not be able to access.

The Qt creator also streamlines the development efforts for each application, saving Laurentiu’s team time and money. “As a developer, words cannot describe the advantages of the Qt tool. Not only does it reduce development time, it makes our jobs as developers easier and more fun.”

In 2011 alone, Intellsys received a tremendous response from users in the Nokia Store; exceeding one million cumulative downloads in the summer of 2011 for its applications, including the free app Insy TV. This application works both as a video messenger (allowing peer-to-peer video messages) and as a broadcasting platform for established TV stations.

“In all of my experience with mobile applications and in the mobile community, Nokia’s developer website and community cannot be beat,” said Laurentiu. “I’m completely content with this ecosystem, as Nokia has proven to provide the best support for me a as a developer, and the best platform for my applications and company to grow.”

HDR and Insy TV can be found in the Nokia Store, along with other applications developed by Intellsys.

The free TrueCaller Symbian app connects phone number directories from all over the world into one easy to use resource. The application automatically engages when you make or receive a call to a number that’s not already in your address book, and it enables you to match phone numbers to names, addresses, social networks and pictures.
 
TrueCaller works by searching online information that’s associated with any phone number. Within seconds, the app’s technology is able to display public information including the other party’s name, their address and the region in which they live. If available, TrueCaller will even pull in the caller’s picture or most recent status message from Facebook or LinkedIn.

When the Sweden-based co-founders Alan Mamedi and Nami Zarringhalam started TrueCaller back in July of 2009, they realized the need of being able to see who the unknown caller is, no matter where the call comes from. While there were myriad smartphone platforms at that time, there were no other directory services in the emerging markets for sourcing this kind of public data.

“Even in the U.S. market, a lot of information is blocked and there’s no comprehensive public directory for phone numbers,” said Mamedi. “We saw an opportunity to connect all the public white and yellow pages around the world into one source, and that’s why we founded TrueCaller.” In addition to searching for publicly available information, TrueCaller also opened an opt-in for enhanced search in which users can share their phone book information. This feature also helps TrueCaller identify prepaid phone cards and unlisted numbers. Should you have the misfortune of being the target of a spam caller, TrueCaller can help you identify and flag that number.

Making the right calls
With a team of five developers – one specifically dedicated to the Symbian platform – TrueCaller was able to develop the TrueCaller app in C/C++ for Nokia in eight weeks. Since that time, the team has been working to improve the app experience and add new functionality. 

“The possibilities for Symbian are huge – the global platform without a lot of development hurdles or limitations makes it fun for us as developers,” said Mamedi, who also told us that they are looking forward to seeing the Windows Phone platform grow given the ease of the development process on that platform. “We made our first release of TrueCaller for Windows Phone 7 in less than a week, thanks to the development tools, which are very well developed and easy to use,” said Mamedi.

TrueCaller’s app development challenges include keeping things light-weight, simple to use and continuing to deliver high quality information. The Nokia developer team helped TrueCaller overcome these challenges and deliver a positive experience to their customers. “Working with the Nokia team has been a great pleasure for us. They’re very helpful and supportive, which is unique in this industry,” continued Mamedi.

Available globally for Symbian, Windows Phone, Android and iPhone, TrueCaller supports users in English, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, French and German. Unique application features include: 
• Global caller ID and number look-up service across platforms
• Social caller ID to give you the latest information about the caller from Facebook or LinkedIn, before you even answer the call
• Call filter to block unwanted calls based on a crowd-sourced database of unwanted phone numbers

Within Nokia Store alone, TrueCaller has achieved more than one million global users. The app has more than two million total users, making more than 70 million number searches per month. The company continues to improve their app by listening to their users and by working with the Nokia Developer support team.

Find out more about TrueCaller on their blog, Facebook page or Twitter.