Nokia urges Indian developers to go global

Bangalore: Nokia will be undertaking a series of new initiatives to assist Indian application developers tap global revenue generating opportunities. "Mobile users everywhere are consuming more and more content daily. Considering that the next billion mobile users will be from emerging markets like India, our developers have the opportunity to not only shape local and global consumer mobile experiences but also lead the mobile applications ecosystem," said D. Shivakumar, Vice President and Managing Director of Nokia, who was speaking at Forum Nokia Developer Conference '09.

Nokia also announced the global release of a new software development kit (SDK) for its Series 40 mass market mobile devices, providing application developers with new tools to create unique applications and services for the high-volume feature phone market worldwide. While Series 40 is the world's highest volume mobile developer platform, the Series 40 Lite devices represent some of Nokia's most popular mass market devices. With this Nokia makes it easier for publishers and developers to create innovative applications for millions of mobile consumers being served by Nokia Series 40 Lite devices across the world. This SDK will also feature support for Indian regional languages like Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, Marathi and Bengali.

"Nokia India continues to invest heavily in its Services strategy and we encourage the 180,000 local Forum Nokia developer members to leverage off our investments and the market opportunity to innovate and create new revenue opportunities for themselves," said Shivakumar.

According to Purnima Kochikar, Vice President, Forum Nokia and Developer Community, "India has the largest and most vibrant pool of qualified developers in the world. As the Internet is entering into the core of mobile experiences, we see unprecedented opportunities for Indian developers in shaping the future of mobile services. This is just the beginning. We will work in close collaboration with the large, talented developer base in India. Our goal is clear, and that is to make it effortless for our partners to create and market highly appealing, relevant applications that consumers globally will find indispensable. Our focus is on open collaboration with the ecosystem and we continue to invest in creating large scale revenue opportunities for application developers and as well as new powerful experiences for our consumers."

Nokia also showcased to the Indian developer community the latest Linux based Maemo 5 OS that will help deliver a true PC like experience. Nokia believes that the next evolution of software will expand across platforms, providing applications for multiple platforms and devices from a single source code base, based on common skills and tools. With a cross-platform approach, Nokia's goal is to make life easier for developers by bringing frameworks that will enable software written just once to work on more than one platform. The company will market and distribute successful applications developed on both Maemo and Symbian platforms through its Ovi Store globally. The Developer Conference was attended by 650 developers from across India and featured sessions from a host of Nokia and Industry experts.

In another significant development, Nokia announced funding for four multi screen infotainment applications, viz., Bollywood Hungama, Eros Bollywood, India Today and Aaj Tak Videos, created by Indian developer companies and content aggregators, under the joint Open Screen Project Fund with Adobe in the first phase of selection. These applicatons have been selected through a stringent shortlisting process, from over 900 entries submitted from over 60 countries and will be available to consumers across the world through the Ovi Store later this month. Nokia further invited companies of all sizes to submit their entries to the Fund for the next phase.