Nokia Focuses on Developers to Keep Symbian Users from Turning to Other Platforms

At Microsoft's TechEd Europe 2010 conference in Berlin last week, Softpedia had the chance to get some answers from Nokia regarding the company's future plans and strategies in the Symbian OS development.

Tarja Kantola Nokia Senior GTM Manager Eseries and Dinesh Subramaniam, Nokia Senior Manager Communications have been kind enough to answer a few questions that will shed some light over the Finnish company's plans for the next few years.

Faced with increasing competition on the smartphone market, Nokia is trying to keep Symbian OS and S60 users from turning to other platforms, by focusing on developers.

One of the key features offered by every mobile platform available on the market development experience is the customization of its interface. The user's interest over a certain platform appears to be directly connected to the level of customization that the platform is offering.

According to Dinesh Subramaniam, Nokia Senior Manager Communications: “When developers create great apps you can personalize your phone, you can download new content and every day becomes a new experience.”

The new strategy is tied with the recent appointment of Stephen Elop, ex-head of Microsoft's Business Division, as the new Nokia CEO, replacing Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.

Apparently Elop “borrowed” the strategy from Microsoft, where he said that his boss believed in the same mantra “Developers, developers, developers”.

Another major change in Nokia's attitude towards its Symbian users is the native experience of the device, which is about to face a lot of changes. Nokia's design team is heavily focusing on the user's experience to make Symbian “a much loved platform once again”.

Even though Symbian S60 is the world's best selling smartphone platform and Nokia is the world's leading handset manufacturer, Dinesh Subramaniam recognized that the company had some hard times lately and that there's a fierce competition on the smartphone market.