Xbox Live, Office, enhanced maps coming to Nokia’s Windows Phones; Qt not

By on Feb 11, 2011 at 5:47 AM
Software February 11, 2011

At at joint press conference today, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Nokia CEO Stephen Elop provided specific details about what the newly forged partnership between their two companies will look like. Fans of Nokia hardware and the Windows Phone software can get excited about the prospects of Xbox Live, Office, and enhanced maps (a combination of Ovi Maps and Bing) coming to Nokia WP sets. Fans of Windows Phone in general can get excited about the world’s largest phone manufacturer throwing its weight behind the recently launched mobile OS. But how do Nokia’s developers, the ones who have committed time and resources to Qt, make out in this deal? The future looks bleak.

In a letter to developers, the companies noted that Qt would still be supported for Symbian and MeeGo — Nokia expects to ship 150 million Symbian phones during the transition; there was also mention of the first MeeGo device shipping later this year. The letter was quite clear in saying that Microsoft would “provide tools for application developers,” not Nokia. Translation: No Qt. This transition from Symbian to Windows Phone is going to be an interesting tightrope for Nokia to walk — especially in regards to developers. The aforementioned letter is waiting for you after the break. Have a look and let us know what you think in the comments.

Letter to Developers about Today’s News
 11 February, 2011 10:05

Nokia and Microsoft today announced plans to form a broad strategic partnership that would combine our complementary strengths and expertise to create a new global mobile ecosystem, one we believe would have all the elements needed to fuel innovation – including search, location, advertising and exciting new devices.

As part of this, Nokia plans to adopt Windows Phone as our primary smartphone strategy, helping drive the future of the platform. This has not been a decision taken lightly by Nokia and we wanted to share some of the key points with our developer community.

Nokia and Microsoft together
The Nokia-Microsoft ecosystem would aim to deliver differentiated and innovative products and have unrivalled scale, product breadth, geographical reach, and brand identity. With Windows Phone as our primary smartphone platform, we would help drive the future of the platform by leveraging our expertise in hardware optimization, software customization, language support and scale.

Microsoft would make available the existing free Windows Phone Developer Tools; Visual Studio 2010, Expression, Silverlight and the XNA Framework to developers. Together, we will provide guidance for developers wishing to port their applications to Windows Phone.

Nokia and Microsoft would also combine services assets to drive innovation. Nokia’s Ovi Maps, for example, would be at the heart of key Microsoft assets like Bing and AdCenter, and Nokia’s application and content store would be integrated with Microsoft Marketplace for Nokia Windows Phones, to deliver a great single commerce experience for developers and consumers alike.

The Qt ecosystem
Qt will continue to be the development framework for Symbian and Nokia will use Symbian for further devices; continuing to develop strategic applications in Qt for Symbian platform and encouraging application developers to do the same. With 200 million users worldwide and Nokia planning to sell around 150 million more Symbian devices, Symbian still offers unparalleled geographical scale for developers.

Extending the scope of Qt further will be our first MeeGo-related open source device, which we plan to ship later this year. Though our plans for MeeGo have been adapted in light of our planned partnership with Microsoft, that device will be compatible with applications developed within the Qt framework and so give Qt developers a further device to target.

Nokia Mobile Phones
Nokia Mobile Phones will drive Nokia’s “web for the next billion” strategy, leveraging Nokia’s innovation and strength in growth markets to connect the next billion people and bring them affordable access to the Internet and applications. This represents a further opportunity for developers. Nokia will leverage our proxy browser technology on mobile phones, as well as continuing to enhance Java support and SDKs, with developers and publishers able to deliver their applications to consumers through the Nokia store.

Supporting our developers
As part of the change in Nokia’s organization announced today, the Services and Developer Experiences (SDX) unit will be responsible for Nokia’s global service portfolio, developer offering, developer community relations, and integration of partner service offering. Forum Nokia will be part of that unit and will continue to support developers for Symbian smartphones and Series 40 mobile phones.

We will strengthen our ability to support developers both globally and in local markets, ensuring that we can work with you wherever you are to bring your latest applications to our store and help you leverage the global revenue opportunity with Symbian and Series 40.

For Nokia Windows Phones, Microsoft would provide tools for application developers to easily and rapidly leverage Nokia’s market reach. The integration of Microsoft Marketplace and Nokia’s content and application store would provide scalable infrastructure and compelling consumer engagement for applications for Nokia Windows Phones.

The combined stores would offer unparalleled distribution. The Ovi Store already delivers content in 190 countries, with local specific content in 90 of those. We are now seeing 4 million downloads a day, with 300,000 users signing up daily and 400,000 developers now working on applications for Nokia on Symbian. In addition to offering operator billing with 103 operators in 32 countries, we plan to support the widest range of business models for our publishers and developers.

We plan to make it easy and profitable for all developers to thrive in the ecosystem, taking advantage of the enablers (API’s) offered by ourselves, Microsoft and other partners – including location, search, monetization and advertising.

What’s next?
As we said, this announcement is about our plans to work with Microsoft and the planning will continue. Our aim is to keep you informed as plans develop, through our Forum Nokia and Ovi Publish websites, newsletters and in person. In the meantime, we want to help you maximize the existing business opportunity, developing for the approximately 50 million Qt capable Symbian smartphones already in use and approximately 150 million more that we target to sell, as well as hundreds of millions of Nokia mobile phones.

We think this is going to be an exciting journey and look forward to having you with us!

Purnima Kochikar
Head of Forum Nokia & Developer Community

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21 Comments

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  • George

    Nice!

  • Anonymous

    QT? Finally I don’t have hear that word from delusional nokia fanbois.

    • blumpkin

      lol…

      Just be careful not to use Skype or VLC media player.

  • YMBz

    Oh yea ,,
    Go Nokia Go

  • Jerry1ken

    Total crap!

  • Midi45

    At least its not android. No one actually likes android in the real world.

    • Anonymous

      Really? lol I guess those sales numbers are a lie…lol

      • Midi45

        Define sales. Buy one get 20 free doesn’t count in the grand scheme of things.

      • Guest

        he is correct.. Android is selling out because of those cheap devices.. if iOS device was cheaper, it would hurt Android a lot…

      • Anonymous

        That is a stupid comment. I am an iOS user myself. iPhones are the same price if not cheaper than Android phones spec for spec. This is the problem with comments from ignorant people.

        Android should have twice the market share of iOS already because of the sheer number of devices that run Android. The fact that the market share numbers are so close is proof of just how powerful Apple as a company is.

  • Anonymous

    well, looking at market share for the both of them…..I guess if Nokia is not selling Smartphones, they might as well not be selling them with Windows Phone 7. (I still think thats a stupid name)

  • Anonymous

    This is good news for both nokia and wp7, both were going nowhere on their own but nokia have always made beautiful solid hardware, just crap s/w, wp7 will give them that legup. too many people dismissive of wp7. remember this is its first iteration and its a lot better than version 1 of most other os out there. If its given time, could be a monster deal

  • http://infotainmentempire.blogspot.com Rob

    Too bad Nokia and Google burned bridges with the whole spat regarding the two turkeys…

    I mean seriously, Nokia would rather PAY someone to do business with rather than get an open source OS? Is it just me or does that seem ludicrous to not pursue Android because it’s OPEN SOURCE without any fees or royalties being paid??? And it has a bigger market – perhaps Nokia doesn’t want to compete against so many hardware manufacturers?

    • http://twitter.com/alent1234 Alen Teplitsky

      open source does not mean free to develop a product. just ask Moto or HTC how much it costs them to develop new phones with new features that aren’t in the current Android source yet. new drivers, network stacks, features, etc. someone has to code it and it costs money. only time it’s free is if you take the code and sell a cheapo phone on a pay as you go plan. and the google apps are licensed from google, not free.

      WinPo7 might cost money but you get a complete product you can put on hardware with minimal development cost. Consider this one of the first steps in the commoditization of the smartphone market

      • http://infotainmentempire.blogspot.com Rob

        Of course open source does not mean free to develop a product. No product is free to develop.

        So you’re telling me that Nokia and Microsoft have already jumped over the hurdles of “new drivers, network stacks, features” already? Have the abysmal sales of WP7 on nice hardware not been enough proof that the OS isn’t enough to sell to anyone outside of the business world?

        And by abysmal I mean the only time I’ve read anything online about sales were not positive. Of course this could have changed and no one mentioned anything.

    • Anonymous

      I think you have to understand that the only thing free about Android is Vanilla Android. Companies have to pay Google for the Google centric apps that make the platform viable out of the gate. That includes Maps, Market Plats and whatever other Google pieces you choose to buy.

      The OS is free true but the parts to make it an experience are not free. Google is running a business, remembering that helps.

      • http://infotainmentempire.blogspot.com Rob

        Have you already forgotten that the forecast for each Android unit for Google is to be about $10 in revenue per handset per year? This is all possible through Google’s ads. Remember, Google makes A HUGE MAJORITY of their revenue from advertising and search.

        I would be surprised to find that whatever Google makes directly off of Gmail and their apps that aren’t related to advertising to be more than 5% of their revenue.

        And haven’t you read comments by many Android users? We WANT vanilla android. We DON’T WANT Blur, Sense, etc. Sounds like OEM’s are wasting their development money.

      • Anonymous

        Perspective please,

        For Google to have $10 Billion in revenue from Android there would need to be a Billion Android devices. Apple had Revenues from iPhone of $10+ Billion last quarter alone. That was just sales of the phone. That isn’t including whatever people buy from iTunes through their phones or Macs/PCs.

        Android is not a money maker for Google.

        95% of Google’s earnings come from Desktop ad revenue and if they even get to 20% of that being from smart phones it isn’t going to be a lot of money.

        Google will make more money from the Android Market than the will from Android itself. Although, with how much Android users appreciate FREE, they are not going to make much money with the market either.

      • http://infotainmentempire.blogspot.com Rob

        I don’t know why I can’t respond to your last response so I’m putting it here…

        Did you not read what I posted? “Remember, Google makes A HUGE MAJORITY of their revenue from advertising and search.”

        I wasn’t claiming that Android is a cash cow. I was simply implying that since Google does make SOME money off of Android (and of course it’s in the form of advertising). You even said in your response they make most of their money from desktop advertising.

        So you think a less popular OS will help save Nokia versus an open source OS that Nokia could skin anyway they please, has more developers, and a (I would assume) larger fanbase?

        You said Google is running a business, so I chimed in that they at least make money from Android. I never said how significant that amount is compared to the rest of their businesses, besides pointing out that it’s probably nothing compared to the ads, just like you said.

        I really feel like you’re not getting the gist of what I’m saying, perhaps I need to be a little more precise or technical with what I say?

  • Anonymous

    I find this insulting, for Nokia to try to spin this off as “exciting news”!… I bought a Nokia for its Symbian OS, if I wanted Windows Phone OS I would of bought something from HTC or Samsung! Nokia and Symbian was a choice for us, now we are left with no choice! Symbian isn’t broken, it’s the upper management that failed to plan and execute that’s broken. Meego was also miss-managed, it was meant to compliment Symbian in the tablet/netbook segment; thus creating a complete eco-system with the Qt framework as the link to manage both platforms growth. Mr. Elop was suppose to shake up management and expedite this plan, not kill it off and give up Nokia’s assetts to microsoft!

  • BadKarma

    wow! the fanboys are really in to this huh. they are really so good and an absolute authority on mobile computing. makes me wonder why they are not working for either apple or google. or maybe they should get a life first? who knows. reading what these fanboys have to say makes me not want to get an android phone. i think it’ll serve me better to get an opinion from an ordinary user (who had to chance to test the ALL the major platform) before buying a smart phone than listen to these condescending fanboys!

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