Nokia has encouraging news for developers
Written by Lucy Black   
Saturday, 02 July 2011

The WP7 apps that Nokia is developing for its new SeaRay handset will also work on its rivals handsets. That's just some of the good news for developers.


Nokia's new handset for Mango, codenamed SeaRay and based on the N9, has only had a brief demonstration but hopefully it will be enough to keep the momentum going until its launch.

 

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On the software side, Stuart Miles, on Pocket-lint, has an exclusive interview with Nokia's senior vice president of Developer and Marketplace, Marco Argenti which includes encouraging news about Nokia's plans for Mango.

Among the points made by Argenti are that Nokia's dedicated apps for Windows Phone 7 won't just be for its phones but also for others from HTC, Samsung and LG. Pocket-lint finds this surprising but to do otherwise would probably be outside its agreement with Microsoft.

However, at the same time as insisting, "Every Nokia App will be available on every phone," Argenti acknowledged that some apps some will be exclusive for Nokia users for a set time, and when it comes to things like mapping, they will be heavily built into the OS, making it more difficult for them to be cloned on other devices.

Mapping is one area where Nokia intends to enhance the Windows Phone 7 user experience and Bing maps are likely to "be playing second fiddle" to Ovi Map.

Commerce is another area where Nokia intends to make a difference, bringing the ability to buy apps, as well as make other small purchases courtesy of NFC technology, and have them added to you monthly operator bill. This will open up a new market of consumers who don't have credit cards or who don't want to sign up and provide details to Microsoft.

The third area where it will do something distinctive is discovery. According to Argenti, Nokia will use a dedicated area on the phone to highlight local developers:.

"We don't want to branch the experience, but there are many cases where a local app might be the best in that country, but doesn't get the coverage it deserves because it's not big globally."

Nokia has had success with a similar tactic for its music service and so this should boost the development of small, localized apps.

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Complete story in Pocket-lint



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Last Updated ( Saturday, 02 July 2011 )