Nokia trying to smooth things over with developers; offering free E7 and Windows Phone device

By on Feb 18, 2011 at 9:59 AM
Software February 18, 2011

According to an email obtained by SlashGear, Nokia will be offering its present developers several freebies to keep the code flowing. In light of the company’s recent decision to move to the Windows Phone platform — and not take its Qt development platform with it — some devs are feeling a little abandoned… and Nokia seems to recognize this. According to the aforementioned communication, the Finnish company will be offering Nokia developers a free E7 handset to help with their current Qt development, a new Windows Phone handset “when available” to aid in future Silverlight development, and free admission to the next Nokia World conference. Will it be enough to move those currently devoted to Qt over to Silverlight? Time will tell.

Read

Tags:
, , , , , ,
17 Comments

Related Articles

  • http://twitter.com/ChazClout ChazClout

    Well that’s a step in the right direction.

    • Chut Pata

      … and the direction would be towards “Bridge to Nowhere.”

    • Kappy79

      Sounds like peeing in your pants to keep warm in winter to me….

  • http://schultzter.ca Schultzter

    Sounds like a good reason to become a Qt developer right about now. How hard can it be to write a fart app!?

  • educatedshrimp

    The more i look at the photo shopped image above the more i want to buy it :/

    • Anonymous

      it looks like a bullet with a screen on it. Or a can of beer.

  • Anonymous

    The image above is Nokia N8…. not E7 :/

  • Anonymous

    Developers go where customers are. Paying customers are on iOS, and to a lesser extent, Android.

    WP7 is nearly insignificant at this point. Even WebOS has more customers on their platform.

    • Chut Pata

      Apple forces users to buy the software, and bootlegging is not as easy as on Microsoft. That is the reason Apple applications are used by lesser people, yet generate more revenues for developers.

    • Bullyboyb

      You clearly haven’t done your research. Paid Applications that are available on Wp7 have generate more revenue for developers than the same paid applications on android over a week. This is because on wp7 they are almost twice as expensive. This is despite the lower user numbers. Android fanboys arewell known for being tight fisted. They love freebies, even the os is a freebie.

  • Yousaf

    I’ve got an N8 but I heard it won’t be available for us N8 users. That kinda sucks. BTW….the above phone is NOT an E7, it’s an N8.

  • Gg101

    I’d imagine the resources, time ,and effort symbian and meego developers had sunk in was worth way more than a few hunderd bucks for a phone. I’d imagine most of these guys will move on to other more established platforms.

    • Chut Pata

      … and when they will do that for Microsoft, it will be worse. If the developers come up with a cool idea, MS will jump in, replicate it, and offer it part of their WP7 for free. That is what MS has done to the developer over decades, starting but not stopping at, Netscape Navitgator.

  • http://twitter.com/TheSyberGroup TheSyberGroup

    Nokia and M$ need to offer Nokia’s current developers 100 profits for the first 6 months on any applications they port to WP7.

  • Anonymous

    If they really wanted to ‘smooth things over with developers’ they would give them an Android phone instead; in my most humble opinion.

  • http://twitter.com/Djpr0n GP

    They’re offering free developer accounts right now for the next year, I figured I’d write some sort of small screen toy app and see what happens. I’d be willing to start developing for 2 free phones.

    • Anonymous

      You can easily wrap up $1000/week into development costs. But by saying you would “code a toy app for 2 free phones” is amateurish at best. Do yourself a favor and stick with your day job.

      I don’t mean to sound condescending but there are publishers that would buy you a phone for coding an app. But not some crap toy app, and neither will Nokia.

blog comments powered by Disqus