Analysis: Chasing Apple, Nokia calls up all developers

 

Analysis: Chasing Apple, Nokia calls up all developers

Junko Yoshida Page 1 of 3 EE Times (04/29/2009 4:41 H EDT) MONTE CARLO, Monaco — As they battle for developers' mindshare in the mobile phone space, Nokia and Symbian Foundation find themselves between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone vendor, is forced to play catch-up with Apple. At a Nokia Developer Summit here this week, Nokia spokespeople dwelled almost exclusively on the company's new service and app store called Ovi. Although the handset giant has talked of the concept of Ovi for the last two years, it's not until next month (May) Nokia is finally launching Ovi Store. Apple which wasn't even in the mobile phone business until 2007 clearly caught the mobile industry off guard with its very successful App Store. Never mind that iPhone operates on a closed platform, and disregard Apple's plans to claim up to 30 percent of their developers' potential revenue. Application developers appear still eager to develop cool software for iPhone. Meanwhile, Symbian Foundation -- acquired by Nokia last year, and now a non-profit organization -- faces growing competition from Google's Android. Android, built around Linux, is leading the mobile industry's future by leveraging its free, open-source community. Symbian, too, is aiming for the open-source community. But "this open source thing is really hard," acknowledged Lee Williams, executive director of Symbian Foundation duing the interview at the Summit on Tuesday (April 28th). Unlike Android which is a "green-field" effort using fresh codes, Williams said that Symbian has to do a lot of "scrubbing of its existing codes" before the Symbian Foundation can completely hand off its software to open-source developers. First, Symbian needs to untangle copyrights and intellectual property rights to a massive collection of third-party commercial software -- originally gathered and implemented by Symbian when it was a for-profit commercial entity, he explained. Subtle differences Looking at the spectrum of mobile apps today, one may wonder if "an open platform" really matters to mobile phone application developers. Symbian, clearly, believes in the open-source community. Nokia, too, hopes to demonstrate at its Summit that openness still matters. But a closer examination shows that there are subtle differences in the approaches taken by Symbian and Nokia. Moreover, the Finnish giant, by pursuing a two-pronged strategy, may be trying to have it both ways. It's championing "open" philosophy, while fostering software "unique to Nokia." First, Symbian OS is indeed going open-source. The company made that decision almost a year ago. That commitment alone, however, doesn't help Nokia much right now. It won't be until late this year, at the earliest, when Symbian Foundation completes that transition and can truly take advantage of collective efforts in the open-source community. Second, in parallel, Nokia is making aggressive efforts in exposing its own platform "to its highest level," according to Rob Taylor, the head of Forum Nokia. "We want developers to create apps that distinguish our device," he added. Nokia's plan here is "being open," but only to the advantage of its own platform and for its advancement.

 

What's Ovi?

Tero Ojanpera, executive vice president, services at Nokia, called Ovi "not just a service but also a platform."

Ovi, however, shouldn't be confused with Nokia's S60 -- to which many developers develop apps.

Ojanpera explained it as follows. Nokia built the S60 framework on top of Symbian OS. Nokia has added an abstraction layer to S60, by using web runtime tools and QT, so that S60 software, developed by web developers, can also run on other operating systems.

With Ovi, Nokia is "raising the abstraction layer concept further," explained Ojanpera, by exposing its own API to the developer community.

Under Ovi Share -- a free service with unlimited storage, Nokia, for example, is offering: an open API; an end-to-end live streaming video solution like Qik and Flixwagon; and what Nokia calls a "syndicated strategy," which allows the third party to develop software, enabling users to send video and pictures directly from Nokia's handsets, for example, simultaneously to a number of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace or Flickr.

"We would like you to think that 'this [Ovi] is the platform I can develop my apps,'" said Ojanpera Tuesday (April 28th).

Size matters

At the Summit, Nokia hasn't been shy about touting to the developer community that the company is "the world's largest mobile handset vendor." Size matters.

When asked what Nokia offers to developers that Apple can't, Eric John, director of marketing at Forum Nokia, made it clear, "Nokia can offer global reach and scale."

Nokia alone has already delivered half a billion camera phones to the world, according to Ojanpera. By opening up Nokia's camera phone API, Nokia is prodding the developer community toward compelling camera applications for Nokia's 2-Megapixel camera phones (based on S40) or 8-Megapixel handsets like N86 (based on S60).

Also, Nokia has shipped 300 million "flash-enabled" mobile handsets to the market, according to Ojanpera.

To that end, in promoting Flash in handsets, Nokia and Adobe created earlier this year "$10 million Open Screen Project Fund," awards grants to help developers create new applications and content over the next two years.

At the Nokia Developer Summit, Nokia announced the first five winners of funding from the Open Screen Project.

Nokia's strategy today is to focus on Ovi and push its largest installed-base handset argument to help sway developers Nokia's way.

Forum Nokia recently held an event in Nokia's Mountain View, Calif. office, in which a large number of Apple iPhone app developers were invited and briefed on Ovi and Nokia's upcoming N97 software development kit, according to Forum Nokia's John.

Symbian, however, has a slightly different strategy to make its case for getting developers' mindshare to Symbian -- away from Apple's iPhone or Google's Android.

 

 

Symbian's strategy

When asked about three things Symbian must tell to convince developers to work with Symbian, Williams said, "First, we'd ask developers to understand what 'open really means.'" "Open" should mean not just the openness of the technology but that of the business model, he said. Symbian will let developers contribute to and influence the direction and the future of mobile phones, he promised.

Second, said Williams, "Choose your technology wisely." Symbian offers, in addition to its foundation originally written in C++, a range of standards and de-facto standards-based environment, including web runtime and QT, in which developers can develop cross-platform applications.

Third, he added, "Think about channels."

Apple's approach is to have a developer give up 30 percent of his potential revenue when distributing software via Apple's App Store.

This is appealing only because developers are always looking for the shortest path for their application software to reach users. "We understand that," said Williams.

"But the community has to come together," understanding that there is not just one, there are many paths -- via third parties, OEMs and service operators -- to sell software. Williams said, developers should be able to ask "why" give up 30 percent to Apple.

Symbian is planning to offer a "Symbian application inventory" free to developers, thus allowing developers freedom of choices in distributing their software. Developers could even build their own storefronts if they wish.

This move for Symbian's application inventory, scheduled for launch in 2009, is a strategy that directly clashes with that of Nokia.

Nokia is now advocating the same 30 percent cut rule as that of Apple, for Nokia's Ovi Store, in exchange for a shortcut to distribution. It also charges a $50 one-time fee to publish software on the Ovi Store, though the fee is waived for Nokia's premium-developer members.