Information, education, and health based applications will play a large role in rural India-Nokia

What are the new strategic initiatives you have undertaken to unleash the potential of the strong Indian local developer base?

During the ten years of Forum Nokia's existence, we have been working very closely with Indian developers and offering world class support in terms generating awareness among relevant target audiences. We have been providing them with consumer insight/intelligence, open technology platforms and unparalleled reach and global distribution network. Today we have 180,000 registered application developers from India registered with Forum Nokia, growing at 48% y-o-y.

India undoubtedly has the largest and most vibrant pool of qualified developers in the world. As the Internet is entering into the core of mobile experiences, we see unprecedented opportunities for the local developer community in shaping the future of mobile services. Our objective is to make it effortless for our partners to create and market highly appealing, relevant applications, which consumers globally will find indispensable.

Towards this end, What are the initiatives you have announced?

We have announced several initiatives at the Forum Nokia Developers Conference for this purpose.

New developer tools created specifically for emerging markets: We have opened up our APIs specifically for Indian developers with new tools for emerging market devices. The Series 40 5th Edition, Feature Pack 1 Lite SDK, a new software development kit (SDK) for Series 40 mass market mobile devices, provides application developers with new tools to create unique applications and services for the high-volume feature phone market worldwide.

Opening Ovi to developers: At Nokia World in September this year, we introduced the Ovi Maps Player API, Ovi Navigation Player API and Ovi SDK Beta for developing a new class of applications across Nokia's mobile platforms. We had also introduced the Ovi Maps Player API for the web platform in May 2009. All these APIs are available to Indian developers easily.

In addition to introducing new tools, we also announced the funding of 4 Indian applications under the joint Open Screen Project Fund with Adobe. I would also like to add that Indian developers have already been helping stock the shelves of Ovi Store significantly with locally relevant content as well as content for global audiences.

This is just the beginning. We will continue to work in close collaboration with the large, talented developer base in India, investing in creating large scale revenue opportunities for application developers and as well as new powerful experiences for our consumers.

What do you think are going to be hot mobile applications for rural consumers in India because that is yet to be penetrated in a big way?

We believe information, education and health based applications as well as financial services will play a large role in rural India. Nokia Life Tools is an example of innovation for India, conceived in India, which is now being 'exported' to similar markets across the globe. Designed from ground up through deep insights gathered from target users, NLT is a range of mobile services designed especially for rural and small-town communities, providing consumers with timely and relevant information, so that they are able to make better choices which will provide them with better life opportunities and builds their confidence.

kannan@cybermedia.co.in