Nokia Paying $10M For Symbian Software Devs

colordev writes "Yesterday Nokia and AT&T announced a mobile software coding contest worth $10 million in prize money. The move is intended to help Symbian compete with Android and iOS. The day before this announcement, Sony Ericsson said it would not be making any new Symbian devices and is instead focusing on Android. That left Nokia pretty much alone with Symbian, and now it wants to find new coding 'friends' to keep the platform alive. Natural selection seems to be slowly eroding Symbian's future. Is this contest too late?"

Comments

I think I'll pass

[Anonymous Coward]

So, one of the "prizes" is 1.0M in marketing for you app, and premium placement in the app store. Don't forget YOU are responsible for ALL taxes. What would the tax be on the 1 million dollars of advertising?

The prize is only $100,000.

[Animats]

The Grand Prize is only $100,000. Most of the "winners" just get some upcoming Nokia device. "Winning" means that the app receives "$1 million" in marketing promotion: "a Nokia press release, premium placement on Ovi Store, placement in Nokia digital and social media efforts, and direct consumer messaging via email and/or SMS." In other words, winning means Nokia spams for your app.

Nokia takes a 30% cut on sales through their "Ovi Store", so they're promoting themselves.

Nokia's total outlay on this "contest" is probably under $1 million.

Re:The prize is only $100,000.

[|DeN|niS]

Oh you're such a dick. Do you work for engadget? With your skills of linking to a source and misquoting it completely, you should.

Quote: "51 Category Winner Prizes - Each of the verified Eligible Entrants that published one of the seventeen (17) Apps selected as a First Prize Category Winner will receive a check for $150,000 USD / $156,229 CAD. Each of the verified Eligible Entrants that published one of the seventeen (17) Apps selected as a Second Prize Category Winner will receive a check for $50,000 USD / $52,076 CAD. Each of the verified Eligible Entrants that published one of the seventeen (17) Apps selected as a Third Prize Category Winner will receive a check for $25,000 USD / $26,028 CAD. Total value of Category Winner prizes $3,825,000 USD / $3,983,661 CAD."

The 100k (times two) comes ON TOP of the 150k.

But of course when you're not busy being a dick on the internet, you're netting 250k per app writing iOS/Android apps, right, so this is hardly worth your time.

If Nokia really wants to remain relevant

[ADRA]

1. Ditch the goal of moving Symbian to anything beyond dumb phones with cameras
2. Change the name of Meego to ANYTHING ELSE
3. Release Meego completely OSS and don't hamper people wanting to go in and tinker
4. Start rolling out both (Official stock) Android and Meego on devices and allow for the devices to switch back and forth between the two
5. Release a marketing campaign to choose 'the next look of Nokia'
6. Analyze which OS is getting better market traction and phase out the loser
7.Profit More!

Re:If Nokia really wants to remain relevant

[Microlith]

4. Start rolling out both (Official stock) Android and Meego on devices and allow for the devices to switch back and forth between the two

These are mutually exclusive endeavors. Releasing Android puts you in the position of your users being dependent on Google (and Google dictating terms to you for access to the Android Market,) while fragmenting your userbase across both platforms.

They just need to release a MeeGo device with a simple bootloader unlock so I can have a better user experience with the same hands-off nature that my N900 provides.

Re:If Nokia really wants to remain relevant

[Microlith]

Irrelevant. They can still provide a good user experience without locking down the device to an almost punitive level.

Of course, the exact same thing could be said for your regular computer. You don't need all that functionality, only a tiny niche of geeks do. Let us lock that down for you...

Re:If Nokia really wants to remain relevant

[TejWC]

1. Ditch the goal of moving Symbian to anything beyond dumb phones with cameras

Many people outside of US still use it and want some compatibility with their old phones.

2. Change the name of Meego to ANYTHING ELSE

MeeGo is just the name of the SDK / developer platform. Most consumers will not see that name when they purchase the phone.

3. Release Meego completely OSS and don't hamper people wanting to go in and tinker

You can now.

4. Start rolling out both (Official stock) Android and Meego on devices and allow for the devices to switch back and forth between the two

You can run MeeGo on N900. I think you can install Android on it too. MeeGo is not ready for any other device yet; not because Nokia doesn't want you to port it, simply because MeeGo doesn't have to features yet to handle any other kind of phone. Nokia doesn't think MeeGo is ready for primetime yet so you will not see it on any other phone for some time.

5. Release a marketing campaign to choose 'the next look of Nokia'

Wait until Q2 2011. I am not allowed to say anything else.

6. Analyze which OS is getting better market traction and phase out the loser

Nokia already said that they are moving to Linux/MeeGo. Qt is the "bridge" to move developers from one to another (just like how Carbon was used to move from MacOS classic to MacOS X). Talking to the people at Nokia, they already consider Symbian to be "legacy" and are already moving to MeeGo.

7.Profit More!

I hope Nokia will.

Re:Who is Nokia again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Symbian "only" has 44% of the worldwide market share of smartphones. http://www.asymco.com/2010/08/02/android-global-share-rises-to-16-of-smartphones-in-q1/

Market saturation and evolution

[dokebi]

If history means anything, the market can only support so many different operating systems (3?). Even with a huge market like handsets and mobile devices, 5 maybe too many. Currently we have 6+ (in no particular order)

Symbian (Nokia)
Blackberry (RIM)
Android (Google)
iOS (Apple)
palmOS (HP)
WinMobile (Microsoft)

Only two of these are available from multiple hardware vendors, and it's hard to imagine new entrants MeeGo (Intel) and Bada (Samsung) gaining any sort of traction. Unlike desktops, hardware/software integration seems to be key in this market, which may mean iOS may have an upper hand. Or perhaps its ease of development, which favors Android or WinMobile. So those will be my pick for top 3. Sorry Nokia, it was good while it lasted. Thanks for the cute ringtone!

Re:Market saturation and evolution

[rlp]

it's hard to imagine new entrants MeeGo (Intel) and Bada (Samsung) gaining any sort of traction

Yeah, but imagine the Samsung OS coupled with the Microsoft search engine. Who wouldn't want a phone named BadaBing!

Re:Market saturation and evolution

[Darkness404]

What I think will eventually happen is that we will have compatibility layers for the more open of the platforms. For example, a high-end RIM device might have an Android compatibility layer that lets it run Android apps, Android might have a WebOS compatibility layer that lets you run apps designed for that, etc.

Realistically, within the next 3 years, almost every (smart) phone will have a 1 Ghz or better CPU based on current trends.

Re:Market saturation and evolution

[Microlith]

No one but Apple can have iOS. No one but RIM can have Blackberry. And frankly, Android is so Google dependent that it is considered a forward-looking risk (they note so on their statements!) that if vendors could get it away from Google, they would.

Re:Market saturation and evolution

[Luckyo]

But Symbian, does anyone outside of tech circles even know what Symbian is? People know the iPhone, people have seen the commercial for the Droid, they know the BlackBerry, they recognize the Palm name but Symbian? Does the average person even know where to get a Symbian phone? Is there even a "flagship" phone? People can recognize the iPhone, a Droid, a BlackBerry some can even recognize a Pre, but what is the "must have" Symbian phone? No one knows that.

Outside US? We just call it "Nokia". It's that text on the phone that every other person in line has.
This is something that US-centric sites like slashdot and their users really don't seem to get. Nokia has near-zero market penetration in the States because it didn't bow to pressure from operators, who in US are gods of the market. They made their phones for the end users instead, often screwing the operator in the process by refusing to allow a permanent lock-in. US operators refused to stock such phones, and sales were crap from get go.
But result from having such phones in countries that have people actually buy their own phones in stores rather then operators? They have almost 50% of entire market outside US. People KNOW them. People were willing to buy essentially crappy, unfinished platform like n97 in droves, because it had "nokia" written on it. They're still buying them in fact. And that was a really shitty first attempt at making symbian touchscreen compatible. Nokia is a household name, something that everyone knows instantly, in line with brand names.

One other thing. Nokia's speciality has never been revolutionising. It has been evolving and out-competing on a price point. Apple, which never got any real traction outside US with their iphone is actually losing market outside US already, mostly to android. And that is because nokia is once again evolving the existing concept of touchphone into something they can make well, and then press the price low enough to kill the competition using their (on corporate level) legendary logistics. It's how they utterly butchered competition several times over during their existence in both cheap and expensive phones.

It's something they're fairly likely to pull off yet again.

Re:Who is Nokia again?

[MrEricSir]

They used to have a lot more. 44% is way, way down from a couple years ago.

Re:Who is Nokia again?

[Nursie]

Yes, yes and yes.

You've been able to get add-on software for symbian phones since... well I had one in about 2005/6. Now they have the Ovi store. And yes, a lot of Nokia's Symbian phones are very similar to the competition. Not that that's always a good thing.

Me, I wish they'd drop Symbian in favour of Meego, but it doesn't look like that's happening any time soon. They are adopting Qt for both, which should allow for some portability.

Re:Who is Nokia again?

[Kensai7]

Too sad that opinions about global corporation doings are shaped almost always but their achievements in the American market and media outlets.

Yes Nokia/Symbian is still huge and prosperous, except for the US market. Many statistics you see around showing Apple or RIM or Google at half the market are simply not taking into consideration other markets as well.

Re:Yum, the smell of fresh toast..

[thaig]

Symbian's got an incredibly robust and excellent kernel. Complain about the UI if you want but it has a lot to teach Linux about robustness, power management and being light on resources.

This just shows how clueless this entire "OS" pissing contest is. The issues that people have are all about about user interfaces and whether or not you have a 1Ghz processor FFS.

Re:Yum, the smell of fresh toast..

[RAMMS EIN]

I don't know. I've always found Symbian quite impressive. I also prefer having a choice in the languages I can use for development, which neither iPhone OS nor Android seem to want to give me. Maemo has been a breath of fresh air: no hoops to jump through, and I can use the *nix development knowledge I already have. But between Maemo and Symbian, I'm not sure which is actually the better system for phones. While modern phones aren't really limited in computing resources by my reckoning, there is still something to be said for a real-time, microkernel OS engineered for devices with limited resources.

Re:Symbian

[RAMMS EIN]

You mean like Maemo?

I just got a Nokia N900, which has Maemo, and I'm very happy with it. Finally, a phone I can code for using my extensive experience with Unix programming.

Re:Who is Nokia again?

[jfanning]

Uh, dropping like a stone?!

Maybe you should check your facts a bit.

http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/F/07/GLB_SMPHN0710.gif

Re:Symbian

[jfanning]

Uh, that would be Meego then?!

Re:Who is Nokia again?

[RAMMS EIN]

``Symbian's origins are nearly 20 years old now.''

Linux is nearly 20 years old, too. Arguably, its origin is in Unix, which is about 40 years old. Out go the Linux-based Android, Maemo and Meego. Mac OS X and iPhone OS trace their origin back to NEXTSTEP from 1989. Over 20 years old, so out they go. Palm's webOS is, depending on your point of view, based either on Linux or on World Wide Web technology - both of which are about 20 years old, so that one is obsolete, too. That leaves Blackberry OS and Windows Mobile, both of which originate from 1996.

Or perhaps "old" doesn't mean "not good enough" after all.

Personally, I think that the fact that, after 40 years, we have systems implementing the Unix APIs on everything from embedded systems to supercomputers, and from specialty devices that virtually nobody has ever heard of to consumer devices like desktop computers, phones, and televisions, means that those APIs are good and one could do worse than continuing to use them.

Re:Who is Nokia again?

[DomNF15]

Agreed - and probably only a large percentage (44%) because Nokia is such a global leader in cellular devices. I don't think people are buying Symbian, they are buying Nokia hardware that happens to run Symbian. It's not like iOS/Android, where people are more entranced with the operating system/user experience than the device it comes on. Symbian has been around for a while, longer than both of it's major competitors. If it's not dying, it's at least not getting the market attention that iOS and Android are...

Re:Nokia, why don't you learn it?

[Urkki]

I'll write it in finnish, maybe you'll understand

Youkkou makken greatikken harrdwwiikken, bukkut youkkour sooffwakkken ikkis krakkap. Frokkom a ukkuseeer poikkoint okkof viiikkew, Sykkimbian is okkkkay, but dekkevelokkkpers hakketen it. Ikkit is a hekkel to wrikkete for. Mokkove to Akkandroid alreakkidy

FYI: Future of Symbian is Qt. After that, developer mostly doesn't even need to care what the platform is, especially if only targetting touch phones. It's not hell, it's heaven, already now. What I mean is, today you can download and install the Nokia Qt SDK, take an existing Qt application, compile and test it first in the Simulator (phone form factor selectable from menu), then (Windows only for Symbian, I think) hook up your two year old 5800XM to your PC with USB, install Qt packages from Windows Programs menu shortcuts, and compile and deploy the app to run on your phone. It'll stay installed too, so you can easily demo your creation to others even after unhooking the USB.

It's almost like Android already!

Warning: the SDK can be considered "beta quality" still in my experience, at least as far as installation is concerned, so it might, but also it might not "just work". If stupid installation problem crap puts you off, perhaps wait for next release of the SDK...

Of course having Qt doesn't do anything about the Ovi store, but perhaps the new CEO can do the necessary yelling, kicking and whipping to get the stupidities fixed.

Me too, but not for the same reasons

[tlambert]

Me too, but not for the same reasons

The problem is that they are coming very late to the "applications game", and they are trying to fit those applications on legacy devices with vastly differing capabilities from one another.

The reason Apple has been so successful here is that all of its devices have similar capabilities and screen resolution, so there is a common baseline for all of the applications to assume, and so from that you get applications capable of using the device capabilities better, rather than scaling back and having the "minimum" UI.

Even the one where the screen resolution is a bit off in "twice as big" mode, the iPad, is "close enough" that the applications for the other devices don't have a problem running with it. Going the other direction, Apple is going to start having a few problems, as people write specifically to the iPad capabilities. The aspect ratio isn't similar enough for "twice as small" to fit those applications on an iPhone/iPod screen. I expect that what will happen is that Apple will normalize the aspect ratio between the devices by changing the next iPhone/iPod to have the same aspect ratio to make the conversions "work".

Android faces similar issues to the legacy systems, which is lack of a standard minimum spanning set -- android doesn't dictate screen resolution, touch (or keyboard) capability, and so on. So Android isn't going to do any better in the applications market than Nokia, unless they address these issues so that the applications experience is actually good for the customer between devices.

Without requiring this sort of standardization of the application operating environment, the customer is stuck trying to figure out how to pick applications that will run on their devices and/or the developer is stuck porting (and testing) on a zillion devices to certify their application compatible, or (more likely), both happen. If so, you only get applications markets that are device-specific, and the developers (those which are willing to be developers in such an environment) will tend to target only the most popular devices to maximize their market size while minimizing their development outlay.

And this is exactly the same problem that a proliferation of APIs and kernel versions and so on have caused for the BSDs and Linux distributions which have largely kept the commercial software players away from trying to sell into those markets (hence things like "no iTunes for Linux", and Adobe specifically targetting one browser and one Linux distribution with their plugins).

-- Terry

Re:Who is Nokia again?

[rrossman2]

Nokia phones also support anything and everything under the sun. I have an older N95 (original, not 8GB, which puts it around 2007ish). Out of the box it supports SIP/VoIP, even having settings for Internet Telephony. With it setup, when I place a call the phone asks if I'd like to use SIP or my cellular plan. Supports a lot of the bluetooth profiles, and you can download apps for the ones not already setup on the phone, Infared, etc, etc, etc. It plays OGG, MP3, ACC, WMA, etc and a lot of video formats too. Uses Real Player to support Youtube and many other streaming sites. Front facing camera so you can do Video calls as well (as long as the carrier supports it), and even if they don't you can use Fring or another app to hold your video calls with another phone that supports it... which isn't Fring on an Android. I mean the capabilities of the phones are amazing. The downside is, the CPU's are slow, and it shows when you pick an option in a menu. Theres a delay/lag between screens.

You'd be hard pressed to find another phone from around 2007 (maybe earlier, not sure when all those features made it into the Symbian/Nokia setup) that comes out of the box as loaded as they do.

Ok I've had it with the UI bashing

[Rexdude]

So the Symbian UI is 'dated' and 'old'. Well, guess what,pick up a Palm PDA from 1995, any Symbian handset and the American darlings, iOS/Android - and look at the way the UI is presented. What pray is so sexy or innovative about a gazillion icons presented in a scrolling view, as on the iPhone? Android does the same. So did Palm and so does Symbian/Nokia. Or is it the pretty transitions when you tilt the screen? Or the beveled edge buttons? GUIs have been about rows of icons to click on for ages. On a non touch mobile device, you use buttons to scroll/select while on a touchscreen you tap and slide your finger to scroll the display.
How many different ways is one to implement menus, checkboxes and radio buttons? Those are not going away any time soon. In 2006, Nokia introduced an optional new home screen that showed shortcuts to apps and alerts for new email/calendar appointments/nearby wifi networks. This is now far more customizable as in the upcoming Symbian^3, where you can have upto 3 homescreens with customizable widgets. Android also has something similar, but iOS as far as I've seen has no such native capability. That's not innovative?
Symbian has been designed from the ground up as an OS optimized for low CPU/memory usage, so it scales well from low to high end devices. It also has true preemptive multitasking since its 2002 debut- for example if there's too many apps open and there's an incoming call, the call takes priority over everything else and the OS will close a couple of background apps to free memory. Compare that with the hottest new Samsung Galaxy S which sometimes fails at receiving a basic phone call.. You can't control when the phone syncs data, or using what type of connection- you need an APNDroid hack to stop it syncing permanently in the background!! People rave about Snapdragon and gigahertz class CPUs for the newer Android devices, but the OS doesn't scale to lower specs at all. It practically requires a high powered CPU to power all that eyecandy.
Let's not even get started on the iPhone 4 antenna fiasco. Symbian has matured over 8 years and got the basics right - power management, multitasking, making calls,managing data connections over GPRS/3G/wifi/Bluetooth etc. It has also supported themes since its inception -there's hundreds of custom themes with different icons and colors available since then on various sites, so it's not like you're stuck with the look and feel that it ships with out of the box either. But well, superficial looks are all that matter in the end, apparently.

Re:Who is Nokia again?

[|DeN|niS]

The US basically does not have SIM-only contracts. To sell phones you need to do so through an operator. Operators insist of things like disabling frequencies of competing carriers, disabling tethering, installing crapware ("Verizon navigator" anyone), etc. Nokia always stayed away from this, and this has been fine as the US market has always been a bit backwards anyway. However, it has become a whole different market in the last few years, and worth getting into, as shown by this AT&T deal. We'll have to see what kind of device(s) with what kind of features come out. Incidentally, doesn't the iPhone exclusivity run out H1 2011 ?

Re:Who is Nokia again?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

The brand has had a 15 year lead time to build robust, usable and competent mobile phones. Nokia should've beaten Apple to the Multitouch punch. They didn't. they should've beaten them to the browser punch. They didn't. They should've beaten them on so many different fronts. I don't think they've got any visionaries at the top who can actually build product.