Nokia lays groundwork for 2010 with new Ovi and S60 tools
Published: 4 September, 2009
READ MORE: Nokia | Applications | OS | Devices
This week's Nokia World event has been, as expected, heavily focused on the Finnish giant's software and services ambitions, despite the appearance of some keynote devices like the Booklet 3G. The highlight of the web services discussion was 'social location' and an increasingly powerful position for Facebook, but it will be developer tools that make a differentiated mobile web offering for Nokia, not apps that everybody is supporting. It announced new tools for its Ovi web platform, and hinted at further acquisitions of innovative start-ups to add distinctive features to its offering.
Of course, its software message was somewhat hampered by the early stage at which its key operating systems, the new open Symbian and Linux-based Maemo, currently are. These two platforms will underpin the Nokia mobile web push, but both will only be fully fledged in time for next year's Nokia World, and have many milestones to reach before then - so the handset leader was limited in what it could say about them, beyond the usual visionary statements. And it will be these two OSs that really propel Nokia's challenge for the high end mobile market.
The first open source release of Symbian OS, Symbian^4 with the Nokia/Qt user interface, will be hardened next year, with various interim releases in the meantime, and the hefty task of converting the existing apps and tools base to open processes. Meanwhile, Maemo will be enhanced via the joint development with Intel, which will bring it close to the chipmaker's Moblin netbook Linux OS, and will incorporate telephony features being created by the two giants.
In the meantime, the existing version of Symbian remains the dominant smartphone OS and the most mature and broadly supported multivendor mobile platform by a long way -even if Android is certainly at the top of the hype curve for 2009. As developers wait for the shift to open source, Nokia did help Series 60 5th Edition with new software developer kits (SDKs) aimed at boosting S60 in the midrange web market, where its real strengths currently lie. An upgraded version of Symbian S60 5th Edition will be rolled out for the Nokia N97 and N97 Mini in October.
In Stuttgart, Nokia announced new SDKs and open APIs, to support easier integration of web content and Ovi services in S60 5th Edition. This goes beyond pure widgets, giving developers greater flexibility to dig into the phone's functions and create rich apps. One of the flagship examples of how Nokia aims to tie together S60 and Ovi is the Facebook deal, which includes tight integration of the social network in Nokia Messaging. Such capabilities will boost S60's high end webphone qualities, raising Nokia's chances of coming up with really revolutionary mobile web devices next year. As InfoSync puts it: "there's something wrong when you can't get more out of a smartphone OS than 'running' widgets", a message Nokia has clearly accepted.
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