Cellphone application biz, like Ovi, gives way to local software developers

The mobile application stores are emerging as the next big business opportunity in the cellphone industry. This has given way to new business opportunities for Indian software companies. Leading players like Nokia, Google, BlackBerry & Samsung are looking at providing a global distribution platform to Indian developers.

Nokia, world’s largest mobile phone maker, alone has more than 1.9 lakh developers in India as part of its third-party developers’ initiative, ‘Forum Nokia’.  Nokia wants to make India one of the global hubs for applications development. It has plans to tap Indian developers for both its Symbian S60 & the latest Maemo mobile phone operating systems.

As per Forum Nokia’s global VP, “Indian developers are completely ready for the global market since much of their applications have a wide appeal. This is in sharp contrast to Chinese developers who are building applications mainly for their local market. This represents a real opportunity for Indian developers and they can also get much higher realisations”.

Nokia also feels such varied applications will make its application store, Ovi, much stronger as compared to competitors. Ovi is the brand for Nokia’s Internet services. The Ovi services can be used from a mobile device, computer (through Nokia Ovi Suite) or via the web. Nokia focuses on five key services areas: Games, Maps, Media, Messaging and Music.

Samsung Mobile, the second largest handset vendor, also has 40 core developers who make applications exclusively for Samsung’s own applications store. 

Orange partner is one more such store exclusively for mobile apps.

This surely is a whole new business opportunity. Given that Indian developers have more than just an idea of what the global customers want, we are surely at an adventage to realise this opportunity.

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