Nokia N8 headed for AT&T, developer contest suggests
Works with carrier to offer $10m for best N8 apps for north American consumers
Published: 23 September, 2010
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Nokia has been trying to get closer to US carriers over the past two years, creating development centers focused on both Verizon and AT&T, and launching several handsets at the latter. But its US market share remains pitiful, and this has the knock-on effect of reducing its visibility to the main financial markets as well as US consumers. Now it seems it will be launching the N8, the new superphone that it claims will turn around its high end fortunes, at AT&T.
The handset will ship in Europe and some other territories next month, but until now no mention had been made of a north American debut. However, Nokia and AT&T have jointly announced a developer challenge, with prizes worth a total of $10m, which appears to mark an N8 launch.
The competition is called '2010 Calling All Developers: North America' and appeals to programmers worldwide to create innovative apps for north American users using Nokia handsets. Any app submitted will be available in Nokia's Ovi Store, where it will be judged by both the vendor and AT&T, though it will also be judged partly on the number of times it is downloaded by consumers. Winners will also get more than $6m from Nokia and AT&T to promote their wares in the north American market.
The deadline is January 28, and there are 17 categories, with a winner in each of these groups, plus two overall grand prizes, one for a general application and one for a game. Category prizes will be $150,000 and grand prizes will get an additional $100,000. To help the process along, the partners will host a developer day in San Francisco on October 5, to show off Nokia's key tools to interested parties and offer advice. This will focus particularly on the cross-platform toolset Qt, as well as Java and Nokia Web Runtime, the latter aimed at simple creation of Ovi apps.
Attendees get a free N8 with developer pack, one of several signs that the prize giving will also mark the launch event for the superphone at AT&T. The carrier has been expanding its range of smartphones to build up its defences against the likely loss of its iPhone exclusive. Earlier this year, it said it would adopt a multiple OS strategy, embracing Symbian, Android, webOS, BlackBerry and Brew, and more recently said it would be the "premier carrier" for Windows Phone 7. The main Symbian offerings have been from the E Series enterprise range, but the rules of the new contest are geared to consumers rather than business. They state: "Qualifying apps must be designed, developed, fully compatible with, and published for, the Nokia N8."
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