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Comment by blub | Hacker News Reader

More nonsense from the people that can't bother with studying the subject even a bit before speaking. You seem to be unaware of the developments with Nokia and Symbian for the past one or two years.

They are making an impressive effort to engage developers and they have made the development much more simpler and straightforward. People that have been developing for Android/iPhone have told me that the Qt SDK is competitive with those other tools when it comes to ease of development and speed of development. See: http://gigaom.com/2010/09/15/whats-it-like-to-develop-apps-f...

As for Nokia switching to Android, see this: http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/24/editorial-nokia-isnt-buil...

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Impressive efforts can still come to nothing, and so far the numbers aren't favorable. I got and started developing for the N900 when it came out, because I absolutely support the effort of truly being open source that Nokia is betting on.

It's just not working out so far. There are no users, the platform is immature, the N900 is not a good phone for users or developers, and most importantly: the Ovi Store is terrible. I released one piece of open source software and gave up on the platform after that experience.

Absolutely, anything can happen and Nokia do still have massive market share. I just don't see how they can catch up to Android and iOS at this point, massive effort or not.

From what I've seen with the N8 prototypes, it looks, feels better than Symbian 5th and it's faster too. Some people have been using the N8 more than myself and told me that they are happy with them. Still, anything can happen :)

N900 was a cool project, but they didn't take it all the way to a commercial product IMO. It registered poorer sales than Symbian and it's always a bit behind when it comes to services & software support. A hacker-friendly and truly open source project, but I don't think that they wanted to invest too much in it, they were probably testing the waters for MeeGo.

I'm curious, why do you say that the Ovi store is terrible?

For one, the interface is a web site that isn't well-adapted to a mobile screen, so getting to the store is cumbersome in itself.

Secondly, downloading an app after buying it is very slow and frustrating. It involves adding a special APT repository with a unique key, and APT on the device is unusably slow.

Third, actually publishing on the store is, as far as I can tell, practically impossible unless you have a company and the name of that company is Rovio.

Third, they have no decent categories, no search functionality worth mentioning, very little information about each app... the list goes on.

As a final nail in the coffin, the prices are much higher than in the Android or iOS stores.

This is all from when I tried the store, needless to say I haven't felt any desire to relive the experience again so things may have changed. I really doubt they've fixed it though.

I don't know if you've used the store on a symbian device, the experience may be better there, but my experience was indeed terrible on the N900.

I really don't see Nokia turning around and putting out a fantastic mobile OS with a well-integrated experience that grabs customers, just like I have a hard time seeing Microsoft managing it. Although, Microsoft do have Xbox Live they could leverage.

That does sound bad. On Symbian the store is a separate app that takes care of everything for you. The install is done in the background and you can launch the app directly from the store app.

Each app has up to three screenshots and description text, but this depends on the publisheer.

Depending on when you wanted to publish, it might be better now because they allow individual developers and you get free signing (for Symbian).

P.S: As a developer I'm happy that the prices are higher. :) 0.99 is ridiculously cheap for software.

Market share for a phone which is not used for purchasing many third-party applications isn't structurally very sticky. If it's a commodity appliance-like device with, at best, Google Maps and a ringtone or two, there's no real incentive to choose the same manufacturer for your next phone, apart from brand identity and UI familiarity.

It's pretty different with iOS and Android if you've invested much in applications. The platform effect kicks in, along with the network effect of the application markets, and makes the consumer increasingly sticky depending on how involved they are in purchasing third-party apps.

Two years ago was far too late. As I said, perhaps if they had started this initiative earlier then who knows? We've had nearly 4 years of the iPhone now, and nearly 3 years of Android, so this was a slow move and a late one.

I applaud the idea behind the Symbian Foundation, but it was too late to tackle Apple and Google.

Hmm,

I love Qt and I'd love to develop for Symbian.

I'm working on a Qt desktop app that might be a good candidate for a mobile port.

>>>I can't even find a Symbian phone in the US to develop on.<<<

I can't see any way to begin mobile development from the US at all - except order a Symbian phone from overseas or something. If you can't start work, it doesn't matter how easy things are.

(and yes, any Symbian folks who want to help me are welcome to come up with solutions)

I've heard that Nokia is almost nonexistant in the US. But the 5230/Nuron should be available.

It's a very cheap Symbian 5th ed phone, that's similar to the 5800 with no wifi/weaker camera and so on. It can get you far enough and then you can use the forum nokia virtual device lab for the rest.

Nokia might release the N8 to AT&T in 2011 judging by their Calling all innovators 10m $ competition.

How do you mean you can't find it? I live in the US, and all my phones have been Nokias for a while. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...

http://www.nokiausa.com

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