Nokia N8 Launch Event - London #ovidevsldn

On Tuesday 3rd August Nokia held, what according to the invite on the Mobile Monday website, was 'an exciting developer event for the N8 which will provide an introduction to QT and the Nokia N8'. As brutal as twitter can be, in it's 140 characters, I think the sentiment expressed in this tweet from @kenshi summed things up, for me, reasonably well:

• 'At Apple+Google dev events engineers do the talks. At Nokia ones marketing try to do developer outreach. Wasted morning. #ovidevsldn'

As it was touted as a developer event I was expecting to see demos of software, including demos that fail sometimes, just like at Apple and Google developer conferences. It's how well you recover that's important not how you fail, as lets face it most demos at conference tend to fall flat! Especially with beta software. Just look at Google TV ;-)

I was hoping to see a demonstration of how simple it was to create an application in Qt and push it to several devices to demonstrate how Qt abstracts the complexity of device fragmentation. A demonstration of QML, the upcoming Qt rendering tools, even in a very beta form, would also have been very cool. Instead, from my perspective, what was delivered was a set of Power Point presentations with a request for us to go out and have a look at the new, improved and simplified Qt tools and the upcoming Qt tools. I am not sure why things were done this way. Seriously I would have preferred to see failing demos as opposed to just powerpoint presentations. Was it a timing issue? I would have preferred two sessions if this was the case. A demo of the current tools and how they make my life easier, and a demo of the new N8 Nokia phone.

That being said, the event was not all doom and gloom. Firstly a few figures delivered during the event:

• 1.7 million downloads a day from the Ovi Application store
• Ovi Maps now downloaded 17 million times
• Ovi Application wizard now downloaded 1 million times. I want to have a little play with this later.
• 80% of Customers who buy applications can now pay for applications in their own currency
• 37% of smart phone users in the UK use Nokia. I would like to have seen a comparison from 3 years ago.
• Every day 1.2 billion people use a nokia mobile phone - crazy.

All good figures!

Although the power point presentations gave the right words i.e:

• simplifying development into 3 areas i. web app, ii. java and iii. native across three handset classes 1. phones, 2. smart phones and 3 java
• and abstracting the difficulty in developing across these 3 formats and device bases, using Qt
• Nokia now signing Symbian applications for free (seemingly only for distribution in the Ovi store ... probably fair enough)

again demos would have been great to actually show us this. I know I can do this by myself, but as a sceptical developer in an event like this it would be nice to be wowed to switch to Nokia development by having it highlighted just how simple it can be.

I was not too sure of how demonstrating the dynamic socialisation of the Ovi store was supposed to benefit the event either. Don't get me wrong, dynamicism on a site is a key driver to get Customers coming back, and having the site promote world cup novelty applications during the world cup is great, but it doesn't impact me so much as a developer. I guess it does indicate a degree of willingness for marketing spend to keep things flowing to provide a dynamic Customer experience, however during the presentation it was said that this was all done by an external agency. I didn't really want to hear this. I would have preferred a technology team at Nokia pumping out these applications to promote their frameworks as opposed to having an external agency managing it. Small gripe, but a gripe all the same.

Then onto the Nokia N8 launch! Well not really a launch I guess as its not going to be out until September, although no firm date given. It does look like a cracking handset. The HDMI out allowing you to play HD content on your TV is pretty cool. Not really going to cover the spec here as this is freely available all over the place. It's not really a secret! I think it will sell well but will it have the same devotion and geek love as Apple and Android. No way. It's not geek chic in my opinion. That does not make it a bad handset! Think consumers will love it but not sure developers will evangelise it. @JamesParton made an interesting point though

• '#n8 is pretty impressive. I'm sure marketing will be extensive. 1 issue? Target audience locked into iPhone 24 month contracts? #ovidevsldn'

So not all doom and gloom, and perhaps I was expecting something different to what was intended. I would have loved a few more techies there though to discuss things. As it turns out most of the crowd were marketeers with probably about 20% of folks there admitting they were developers ;-)

Still a demonstration of intent:

• actively supporting developers with tools and processes,
• delivering interesting handsets with Consumer appeal
• creating a developer ecosystem with legs

even if just words is better than no demonstration at all. I am sure the Nokia Developer Summit in London will give the development demos that, for Nokia's sake, will further drive the positive message home. What is good is that Nokia clearly see the opportunity. It will be great if they can grasp it!

Hi Ho, not to worry I guess.

Cheers

m