Nokia fights back with new developer offerings

Nokia has made a number of developer announcements today, which significantly strengthen their developer services and offerings. Perhaps most interesting is news of a public beta service that allows developers to get their content Symbian Signed at no cost (compared to a previous first time signing cost of up to $215). Also important is the news that individuals can now register as Ovi Publishers (previously restricted to companies) and that the Ovi Store is now accepting Qt-based applications. Finally, and the most significant in the long term, is the first full release of the Nokia Qt SDK 1.0 and the accompanying Nokia Smart Installer (previously in beta). Read on for additional details. 

Video: Tour of Nokia's Experience Lounge

During a recent visit to Nokia's Espoo (Helsinki) offices, I had the opportunity to look round Nokia's Experience Lounge, which showcases all of Nokia's latest products and services - from Ovi Maps and Nokia Messaging to the latest Nokia handsets. As an additional bonus, tucked away in one corner of the room, is a set of shelves that contain one of almost every Nokia phone model ever produced. So how to share this with loyal readers? Film a walkabout of course! 

Offscreen Technologies passes 25 million Ovi Store downloads

Offscreen Technologies, who have released a wide portfolio of games, applications and eBooks on Ovi Store, have announced that their content has been downloaded more than 25 million times. Offscreen has focussed on providing content for Nokia's touchscreen devices, including the Nokia 5800, N97, X6 and N900. They currently have around 100 titles in the Ovi Store; some of the applications, including Level Touch, Bright Light Touch and Labyrinth Lite Touch have been downloaded more than a million times each. More below.

Nokia's Tero Ojanperä on Solutions and strategy

Nokia is currently transforming itself from a hardware company to a hardware+services (solutions) company. At MWC 2010, we spoke to Tero Ojanperä, EVP of Services, in order to get an insight into current progress. Over a wide-ranging interview we cover a number of topics around Nokia's service strategy including how Ovi fits into Nokia's software platform strategy, the thought processes that led to free navigation, the importance of services compared to phone hardware, getting content onto the Ovi Store, the importance of partners and much more.

Video: Anssi Vanjoki on the future for Symbian and MeeGo

In part 3 of our MWC interview with Anssi Vanjoki, EVP of Markets at Nokia, we discuss the future. How "for the great masses of the world, the first computer they will have will be an extension of the phone based on Symbian". How MeeGo's rich contextual crossing of the real and virtual world will use a map-based user interface and will create "the possibility for people to live in the media." 

In the second half, we hear about the three "buckets" (types) of competitors, the importance of open standards and ecoystems, and a three-fold answer to how we should judge Nokia's future business performance (KPIs).

Maemo and free Ovi Maps Navigation

Yesterday Nokia announced that Ovi Maps navigation was going free for all it smartphones. Initially this is available for Nokia's Symbian device models. However, Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President of Nokia, speaking at the London event said, "we will also be increasing support for this.. and certainly moving forward it will also support Maemo". However no commitment was made for specific Maemo models.

Ovi Store (mobile site) working on N900

Ahead of an official availability announcement it seems that the mobile site version of the Ovi Store (store.ovi.mobi) is operational on N900's running the recently released firmware update (1.2009.44.1). A number of application and games are currently available for download. Content is installed via the Application manager, which is automatically launched when you tap a 'Download' button on the store. Read on for further details and screenshots.