Nokia courts African developers to consolidate innovation

“Building strong partnerships and communities makes us work together to drive business and innovation, and we need developers if we are to be successful in our business,” Brad Brockhaug, Nokia sub-Sahara Africa head of sales, said yesterday, 1 December 2009.

Despite boasting 45% of Africa's market share and being Africa's number one brand, Nokia - the world's largest cellphone maker - has never given African developers a platform of direct collaboration, and this signals a huge shift in Nokia's approach towards Africa - a continent seen by the west as a ‘dark' and ‘troublesome' place.

“Our new focus area is to create irresistible solutions enriched by vibrant ecosystems, and because we understand the importance of developers, who are the core of business of Nokia's success, we thought it was critical to work with you,” he added.

African delegates hail from SA, Rwanda, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya.

“These big multinational companies should not just sell their products and pocket the cash, they should also invest in human capital and groom talent, by for instance providing bursaries and business opportunities and even subsidising the purchase of devices,” one delegate, who declined to be named, told Bizcommunity.com.

Training includes introduction to mobile web-related technologies, services content management systems, developing websites using Joomla, mobilising websites, and developing widgets.

Delegates will also be given extra lessons about unlocking the USSD potential with operator and Quick Trials of SMS applications with operator. They are also expected to ‘learn more' about SMS technology with application class taxonomy and simplified SMS infrastructure with support for safaricom modems (built on top of SMSlib), and SMS Server-side considerations, including HTTP, Res, XML, SQL, and JavaDB.

Trainers include Kari Salo, principal lecturer at Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, Dr Nathan Eagle and Michael Gordon, both of MIT. Forum Nokia, which is overseeing the training, is said to be providing business opportunities to software developers and web designers.

Nokia Series 40s is the world's highest mobile volume developer, while Series 60s is the world's largest smartphone developer platform, Brockhaug said, adding that developers have multiple opportunities to showcase their talent through Ovi, which can be accessed on mobile devices and PC.

Mathia Nalappan, GM of Nokia SA, said: “SA is among the top five countries globally using Ovi Mail, and almost 29% of South Africans are using mobile user-generated content (UGC) and services on a daily basis.”

He added: “Ovi empowers consumers with content and has currently over 6000 content items for the most popular Nokia devices, and 500 new items each week and growing.

“We are working hard to ensure that over 20 markets have local content, local languages support and operator billing by 2010.

“Ovi Store's global distribution offers developers and publishers huge opportunities because they can reach the whole world through Ovi Store's access of over 180 countries, and content coming from 65 countries.”

Sharoda Rapeti, MTN GM for products and services, said her company supports the Nokia Developer forum programme, and is keen to engage in a Partner Share Initiative to adapt locally developed applications.

The forum is being supervised by Nokia Finland head of developer engagement community Harri Pennanen.

For more information, go to http://forumnokia.com.