Nokia continues to strengthen developer ecosystem in Asia Pacific to meet diverse requirements of growing user community

Company’s sustained efforts to lower barriers to innovation attracts strong participation from developers of all sizes across APAC

Singapore – Nokia today announced its commitment to continue strengthening the developer ecosystem in APAC through Forum Nokia, the company’s global developer support organization that connects developers to tools, technical information, business support services and distribution channels.

As a result of sustained efforts to lower the barriers to innovation, Forum Nokia has in the last year seen more than 30 percent growth in registrations by developers of all sizes across APAC, bringing the total number of registered developers in APAC to more than 500,000.

“Forum Nokia has been focused on lowering barriers to innovation to help third-party developers bring applications to market quickly and easily to Nokia consumers,” said Kenny Mathers, Head of Developer Relations and Marketing, Forum Nokia, APAC. “We are pleased to see the strong traction in our developer community as a result of this, and are excited for Nokia customers as they get access to a growing variety of content and applications on Ovi Store to meet their diverse needs.”

Nokia offers the largest business opportunities for developers through scale and reach including global support from Forum Nokia and distribution through Ovi Store . The Ovi Store has an existing addressable market of 50 million Nokia Series 40 and S60 device users, with the service expected to expand to 300 million consumers by 2012.

Forum Nokia has been investing significant effort to building the third-party developer ecosystem in Asia and to stimulate development of local content. Some of the recent initiatives and activities undertaken include:

· Holding developer competitions across APAC cities, including Thailand and Vietnam where local developers where challenged to create and submit applications and widgets for the Nokia N97
· Partnering with telecoms operators across the region to stimulate development of locally-relevant content and applications for their subscribers
· Conducting “Forum Nokia Code Camps” to impart technical knowledge to budding developers in eight APAC cities across Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore
· A “Champions” programme to nurture and promote a stable of nearly 40 budding developer talents
· Driving awareness and participation in the Open Screen Project– a US$10 million developer fund designed to promote and accelerate the creation of Adobe Flash content, applications and services for an addressable market of 300 million Nokia Flash-enabled devices
· Calling All Innovators – a global competition that has been attracting strong participation from APAC developers to create applications and content for both mature Internet and emerging markets

Nokia has also been committed to lowering the barriers to innovation for developers. From a technical aspect, the company is simplifying and lowering the costs of mobile application development through the use of standard web technologies with Web Runtime plus advanced environments like Qt.

To help bring applications to market, Nokia has launched Publish.Ovi.com, a self-service, web-based tool that gives individual developers the same opportunity as established industry players to publish and sell their applications to millions of Nokia consumers via Ovi Store.

Supporting Quotes:

Lucie Swan, Marketing, Gambit Group Pty Ltd
“The sheer number of devices worldwide dictates that Nokia continues to be front-of-mind in our development roadmap and our long-term business strategy. Nokia has also made it easy for developers to work with them. The way that the Ovi Store has been set-up and is operating makes it a level playing field for developers of all sizes. As a regular participant of Forum Nokia, our numerous dealings with their technical support staff have always been speedy and comprehensive. In relation to development work we’ve undertaken for other platforms, the development specifications and timelines from Nokia are always concise and well-documented.”

Darius Cheung, CEO, tenCube
“Considering that Nokia is the market leader in mobile devices, the Ovi Store provides a very powerful and low-cost platform that makes it easy for small developers and start-ups to access a global consumer market on a far bigger scale than other apps stores - easily reaching executives in New York to Chaiwallas in New Delhi. We started out years ago as three guys from a garage and the people at Forum Nokia – many of whom are developers like ourselves – have provided us with the tools and technical assistance, as well as business support services, funding and distribution channels to bring our application to market. Moreover, as a result of platform standardization, developers today are finding it very easy and viable to build innovative applications for the Series 40 and S60 platforms to reach many users globally with just a one-time development effort.”

Joanne Lee, Online Editor, The Straits Times
"The Straits Times Online is very excited to be part of Nokia's new offering. Being part of the user interface, without users having to download it, is a first for The Straits Times and we are grateful Nokia decided to use The Straits Times as its news source."