I’m sure there’s a lot of executives reading who wouldn’t mind the contract to build 300 apps for Nokia.
Alas the opportunity has been snapped up by Canadian firm, Polar Mobile. Congratulations chaps.
The focus for Polar is obviously Windows Phone — and this news demonstrates Nokia isn’t hanging around. Microsoft has already made good progress getting content on their app stores, this will certainly keep things moving. There’s a lot more details via the link below.
Nokia Corp. is turning to Toronto-based app developer Polar Mobile Group Inc. to build more than 300 mobile apps for its current and future smart phones, as the world’s largest handset maker tries to regain relevance in the next-generation mobile device market.The deal, to be announced Wednesday, is one of the largest in Polar’s history. The first 50 apps, to be released in the next two months, will run on Nokia’s Symbian operating system, which powers several of its existing line of phones. Polar will also develop apps for the MeeGo platform.
Am I the only one who finds it pathetic that Nokia has to throw money at developers to get them to make applications for their platforms?
Pathetic or realistic?
The fact that it’s the only realistic way they can get people to pay attention to their platforms is pathetic.
They’ve got to do something… No?
Money better spent on developer evangelists, hiring hot shit product designers, or instead just bundling gift cards to their app store with future devices.
Pathetically realistic?
I’d say having six different ways to program for Symbian might have hurt developer uptake. It’s confusing. I like the idea of one SDK per platform, if the SDK is strong enough to do everything desired.
Stefan please don’t be silly, and make your anti-Nokia and anti-Symbian hate quite so obvious – at least give us poor observers some challenge in discerning your likes and dislikes 😉
Firstly, are you confident that Apple, Google and Microsoft have never paid any developers to create apps for their respective smartphone platforms? I’m completely unconfident on this.
Secondly, you are clearly not aware of Ovi (Nokia) Store stats – clearly you missed how outrageously successful it has been over time, how the rate of new Symbian apps is accelerating, how developer support is INCREASING (dead platform!?), how the amount of money developers are making from both Symbian and S40 (yeah, that old chestnut, Java Mobile, who’d have thought it? /sarcasm) and how the developer success stories (pick your definition – e.g. 1 million+ downloads for an app) are going up and up and up.
So in all that success, how many of those developers did they pay? Less than rival platforms I’ll bet.
Hey, but far be it from me to let truth stand in the way of a bitchy comment!
Is it just me, or does this sound like Nokia is simply trying to synthetically grow their app store statistics, without giving a dingo’s kidney about the quality of those 300 apps. I mean, THREE HUNDRED apps, come on, where are they even going to come up with reasonable IDEAS for 300 apps, let alone 50 in two months, let alone build them? Are 95% of these just going to be some crappy WebRunTime wrappers around random websites, or such? I cannot image how any company could come up with 300 unique, meaningful apps of reasonable quality.
Or perhatps we should take that number as 100 apps PER PLATFORM (Symbian, Meego, WP)? But I think my point still stands.