What App Makers Say About Nokia's Store
This week Nokia took to a mobile conference San Francisco to woo U.S. application developers to its Ovi mobile application store. The company has taken some knocks lately for missing out on a smartphone revolution that has catapulted Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone to godlike status in the Western world.
Discussions with developers show that Nokia (NOK) is making some headway in proving its value in a Silicon Valley preoccupied with Steve Jobs and Google (GOOG), but it’s still got a ways to go.
Nokia approached Andy Sheldon, founder and chief executive of San Francisco-based Fizwoz, at a Silicon Valley event in December, after he had showed off his Fizwoz application, a mobile auction application that connects cameraphone users to photo editors who could potentially buy their images. A month earlier, the company had launched a beta version of its application in the Apple App Store.
Mr. Sheldon says Nokia sat down with him and explained its geographical reach, and how it sells more smartphones a day than the competition. Nokia waived its access fees for the Ovi Store and even pointed Fizwoz to freelance developers it could use to develop the application for Nokia.
