This week, Nokia provided an update on its Ovi Store’s momentum, in terms of downloads. The company said it’s now seeing 3 million application downloads per day, up from 2 million back in September. Over the past 12 months, 400,000 new developers have joined its Forum Nokia developer network and its Qt Software Development Kit (SDK) has been downloaded 1.5 million times. What’s more, 92 developers have even seen their apps downloaded over a million times.
All these statistics point to one thing, says Nokia: turnaround is happening.
Although Nokia’s Symbian platform is still tops in terms of worldwide market share, it has been losing ground in key markets (like the U.S.) to Google’s Android mobile operating system, especially as the latter is pushed onto even cheaper, feature phone-like devices. Nokia is aware of the competition, however, and knows it must make changes in order to stay relevant in the rapidly changing mobile industry. It has been openly reaching out to developers over the past several months with a clear message: we’re listening.
Nokia’s new Qt SDK, launched at Nokia World this fall, resulted in a 70% reduction in lines of code and greatly simplified the process of developing for Nokia’s mobile platforms, the company announced. It also hired a new CEO, Stephen Elop, formerly of Microsoft’s Business Division, it has seen a number of top execs depart, and, just this week, saw the appointment of Jerri DeVard to a new position as Chief Marketing Officer. DeVard’s hire is aimed at bringing “fresh thinking” to the company, Elop explained in a statement.
Nokia knows that its turnaround is never going to be complete, though. “There’s never a checkered flag,” said George Linardos, Nokia’s VP of Ovi Media, because “the pace of innovation [in mobile] will only pick up.”
Developer Poll!
So developers, we ask you: are Nokia’s changes working? Are you more interested in developing for Nokia platforms than you were in months past? Or has nothing changed?
It will be interesting to compare Nokia’s PR with your responses here on ReadWriteMobile in this week’s poll.
