I previously wrote on this subject a year ago, when Android was announced, and three years ago, when I was really disappointed by a pretty much dead S60 applications market.

This time it started with a great presentation by Teemu Kurppa (a mastermind behind mobile Jaiku) at MobileDevCamp Helsinki – “Platform = Stage. How to choose a mobile development platform?“. It is a must see for every mobile developer.

Teemu compares the number of “educated users” for S60, iPhone and J2ME enabled phones, and illustrates that they are cardinally different from absolute numbers of sold devices/potential customers advertised by companies behind those technologies.

Even if iPhone/iPod Touch has the smallest number of sold devices, it has 3x times the number of “educated users” than its nearest competitor (S60), and “educated users” are the real potential customers with the money and intention to buy.

Teemu also compares the distribution channels – Apple App Store vs. S60 Download and user experience when downloading and installing applications.

By far iPhone/iPod Touch coupled with App Store is the absolute winner as a development platform, if you want to maximize your target audience and profits. But there will be two major disruptions this year, trigerring a ripple effect in mobile development pond – Nokia’s global Ovi Store launch and Google’s Android Market launch in Europe.

However as Ewan MacLeod reports Nokia’s Ovi Store got more than a cold reception from mobile developers in the Bay Area, who were unimpressed by “400 million Ovi compatible handsets by Dec 2010″ proposition.

Mike Rowehl in his rant “Please Don’t Mistake My Apathy For A Lack of Understanding” explains the reasons behind his choice of iPhone as a preferred development platform. Addressing Nokia, RIM and Microsoft, Mike wrote “Once things change, once you get your stores developed, released, and proven as a good commercial channels to end users – then we can talk again. Until then we’re all just going to keep laughing at you and developing for iPhone”. He got a reassuring comment from Lee Williams, executive director of Symbian Foundation, which I do hope is the first sign that at least Nokia starts caring about developer’s needs.

iPhone was the buzzword of 2008, but I am still closely following Google’s Android development. I was really impressed by a successful example of one of my friends, who concepted, developed and published mobile application for Android in about a month of evening coding – without any prior mobile development experience, let alone Android experience. Android documentation and community, encouraged and supported by Google, allowed this to happen.

Apple’s App Store success (1 bln downloads quoted) indicates that there is a lot of moeny in 3rd party application market, and there will be a fierce competition between Google, Apple and Nokia for developers attention. The one that succeeds will have to forget about having the largest number of devices on the market, and concentrate on three really important things:

• providing a good distribution channel with a fair revenue split
• educating users about possibility to install mobile applications
• creating a decent development platform, with a good toolset, comprehensive documentation and active community

With Apple being now a clear leader, and Android a strong challenger with large potential, it is going to be an uphill battle for Nokia to regain trust of mobile developers and deliver on promises of Symbian Foundation and Ovi Store.

I am staying in Finland and will concentrate mostly on developing social training log Moozement, where I see a great potential. I will also be working as an independent consultant, so if you need help with your projects – get in touch.

I am hoping to get more time to formalize my thoughts, ideas and experiences with agile development methodologies, development of internet services and marrying them to mobile devices. So watch this space for more interesting blog posts.

The decision to leave was a tough one. Nokia clearly is an amazing company to work for, especially now, when it is aggressively establishing itself in the internet services domain. What makes Nokia unique is its ability to reinvent itself, and I believe that it will emerge ever-more powerful from this latest transformation.

I feel privileged to have worked with and learned from so many passionate, talented people. But after about six years at Nokia, working on products used by millions of people every day, I’ve decided that it is time to move on and explore the world beyond the corporate pond.

Let the future begin…

Personally, I think this is great news. An open mobile platform is something that was long due to stir up the world of RIM-Windows-Symbian.

Android managed to get many things right from the very beginning, things that took several years for S60. While S60 initially took Microsoft-style approach to development community – with multi-level support, exclusive club membership with access to the source code, signing and licensing, Android is quite open and democratic.

When Google announced Android SDK – my first thoughts were – it’s a smart move to release SDK before devices are available. Google’s name alone would be enough to attract developers and hackers to this new platform, so they can create a developer community by the time devices are shipping. Then Google announced developer challenge with $10mln in awards.

Who wouldn’t like to try? And we didn’t have to wait long for examples. Moscow-based startup company Sadko announced Android application CallFreq – a smart dialer application.

Ukranian software house OreDale offers to implement your ideas for Android developer challenge for a reasonable compensation.

Android freeware directory already features 21 application.

What is it that I liked so much about Android? Mostly things that I complained about in Symbian/S60.

• SDK

On November 12th, 2007 when first Android SDK release appeared on the web I downloaded and installed it on my Linux machine. Size of the SDK was more that reasonable – 54Mb. Emulator startup was fast. There were plenty of sample applications illustrating APIs. Installing Android plugin for Eclipse was simple. Debugging and tracing tools were also in the pack.

Unfortunately developing for S60 in Linux is still not an easy ride. S60 v3 FP1 SDK for Windows is 354Mb, which still might be a problem if you don’t have fast internet.

• Developer support

Google got Android developer support under control from the very beginning – forums, blogs, online SDK documentation, API examples, application examples, video tutorials, – all on http://code.google.com/android.

• Software development – learning curve

If you ever developed for Symbian OS, you know that you have to learn a lot of new stuff – what are the basic types in C++, how to work with strings, how to implement multithreading, how client/server works, how Symbian database management system works, etc. Unfortunately entry barrier for Symbian development is high.

Android, even though it is a Linux based OS, has chosen Java as the main programming language and Sqlite as DBMS solution. If you know Java, you can start coding for Android already today.

I wrote about issues related to software development on S60 platform in “Do we really have a mobile development platform?“.

Nokia has taken several steps in order to make development for S60 easier and lower the entry barrier – such as Open C and Python.

But as Michael Mace writes in his “Google, the OS company blogpost about Android impact on Symbain“It’s not fun competing against a free product that’s been subsidized by one of the richest companies in the world (just ask Netscape).”

• Security and openness

I wrote about S60/Symbian platform security issues in “Symbian OS Platform Security – good or evil?“.

Android’s approach to security is along the lines – let the user decide. Application defines which permissions it requires – and user grants these permissions when the application is installed on the device.

Let’s see what it turns out to be in the real world – in “At application install time, permissions requested by the application are granted to it by the package installer, based on checks with trusted authorities and interaction with the user.” statement “trusted authorities” is a subject for concern.

• Developer perspective

I can recommend an excellent artile by John Lombardo “A developer’s perspective on Google’s Android” that describes first-time user (developer) experience with Android.

• Consumer perspective

From a consumer perspective Android appears to be a well designed platform that can be easily extended. At the moment it has less default applications than S60 platform, but firstly, that will be compensated by 3rd party developers (especially since “all applications are equal” idea is core to Android ideology), and secondly, Android provides a powerful browser based on Apple’s WebKit browser engine (same as used in iPhone and newer S60 phones), which would allow users take advantage of all internet services offered by Google.

• Open Handset Alliance

Open Handset Alliance established by Google caused a mixed reaction from Nokia.

Helsingin Sanomat wrote that: ” Nokia feels that Android, a mobile telephony alliance announced on Monday by Google, is unnecessary because Nokia has already been doing nearly everything that the alliance is just talking about. Nokia says that its S60 platform, which is based on its own Symbian operating system, is the best and most workable foundation for Internet services of mobile telephones”.

On the other hand Kari Tuutti, spokesman for Nokia Multimedia, said that Nokia joining Open andset Alliance is not ruled out at all.

Conclusion:

Android is a new guy on the block, and it is not all roses. It still has to survive the harsh reality of hardware products manufactuing world and maintaining API compatibility between versions and devices in order to establish itself as a real platform. Because of the Apache license used for Android SDK “applications designed to be compatible with Google’s platform could be made incompatible with a particular device, by a handset vendor who removes core Android APIs and replaces them with their own closed source alternative“.

Integration with the real hardware can bring more surprises than anticipated by a company with software background. So I wouldn’t count on seeing first Android devices earlier than Christmas 08.

Google got many things right and made a very good start. Android looks quite promising, and Google seems to be quite serious about making it world leading mobile platform. At the same time Nokia has an established platform, a huge base of S60 devices already on the market and talented S60 R&D team.

Year 2008 promises to be very interesting.

Now internet services and software are becoming central to Nokia’s growth strategy.
This change sparkled a lot of discussions about what Nokia actually is and whether this change is for better or for worse.

It is interesting how sometimes one can see more from outside than from inside.
I’m sure that in depth analysis “Nokia, the computer company?” that Michael Mace posted soon after the original Nokia announcement about new strategy was eye-opening for many people in Nokia: “Ten years from now, Nokia’s going to be the subject of an interesting business case study. It’ll either be the stirring story of a company at the height of its power that had the courage to challenge its deepest beliefs. Or it’ll be the cautionary tale of a company that had it all and blew it.”

And then came Ovi and blogosphere started writing about the next page in Nokia’s history,
and investors were happy – Nokia stock rose on the news. Well, there were quite sceptical remarks too about the whole idea and some reasonable concerns about Nokia’s attempt to compete with its own customers – operators.

When it comes to operators – nobody likes competition. Except for the end customer who benefits from it the most. Personally I believe that operator’s dominance in mobile services is evil and I really hope that Nokia will move even closer to its real customers – end users.

And as Guy Kawasaki wrote in “The Art of Innovation” “Don’t be afraid to polarize people. [...] The worst case is to incite no passionate reactions at all, and that happens when companies try to make everyone happy.”

Reflecting on Nokia’s strategy change Hutong wrote “In other words, Nokia wants to be Apple. Nokia hardware, Nokia software, Nokia back-end, Nokia services, all on Nokia’s terms”. Michael Mace blogged about Nokia and Apple being now at war.

I have to disagree with these statements. I don’t think Nokia wants to become another Apple or is at war with it. I would say that Nokia is moving more towards Google direction. Opennes and innovation are the keywords. Maemo is just a perfect example of that approach in Nokia’s strategy. Ari Jaaksi wrote about this in his blog post “Open source works well for new stuff” .

Michael Mace wrote on Nokia’s new strategy – “the hard part is implementing”. I have to agree. It is going to be a damn hard part. Many people still remember the fate of Club Nokia.

But I believe in Nokia’s ability to change (otherwise I wouldn’t be here
Why? Because there are people like Stephen Johnston working for Nokia.
Read his excellent post “Enterprise2.0 – what does it mean for mobile?” where he explores what implications does Enterprise 2.0 has on mobility and Nokia.

Stephen writes about the need to improve Nokia’s transparency, collaboration and speed and I can sign under every word in this statement.

My top 5 list of improvents in R&D would be:
1. open platforms, open APIs and good developer support for them
2. talk to the consumers directly – via blogs and forums
3. embrace and adopt new technologies in communication and in development
4. care for own engineers and give them more freedom
5. cultivate beta culture

As Stephen Johnston said “Plenty of improvement ideas are in the pipeline, and the key one for me will be to build up a sense of community of Nokia early adopters and use them as lead innovators to help us know what we should be working on next.”

From my point of view the most important change would be that of the spirit of development in Nokia, so that beta culture really grows roots, and more interesting and innovative projects have a chance to emerge from our own developers and see the light of day.

William L.McKnight, 3M chairman of the board, formulated management principles already in 1948 where he encouraged 3M management to “delegate responsibility and encourage men and women to exercise their initiative.”

This is one principle I see us in Nokia adopting this very moment.

The last bastion of Windows was my Nokia work laptop, and now there is Nokia corporate version of Linux installed. I would’ve preferred Ubuntu, but that was not an option.

Migration was relatively painless and that’s yet another proof that Linux can be successfully used on laptops in corporate environments. As a disclaimer I should say that moving to Linux was not a sentimental decision or pledging support for Linux community, but a pure necessity of my present job. Using shell scripts and tools like sort, awk, grep, python, perl and running experiments with web 2.0 stuff locally (even without a network connection) is just so much easier.

The only thing I really miss from Windows is Lifeblog. I really hope that soon there’ll be a way to upload complete Lifeblog database to an internet server and access it via web interface. Let’s see what Ovi brings us when it’s ready.