Nokia is this week expected to announce a 3,000 euro ($3,812) annual subscription to Forum Nokia, a world-wide network of developers, entitling individuals to early access to new Nokia tools, products and code. Marketing and business assistance is also provided.
Offered as Forum Nokia Pro, subscribers will initially receive a software development kit (SDK), IDE, documentation and platform terminal for the 6600, one of Nokia’s latest handsets that shipped in October.
Forum Nokia Pro subscribers must, in return, provide details about the type of company they work for and areas they are targeting through development. The subscription program will be announced at the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, France.
Nokia claims 1.3m Forum Nokia members and believes the network’s growing popularity creates both a problem and an opportunity for the company, as it needs to better understand what’s happening in the community.
Nokia is aiming subscriptions at professional, company-based developers and expects 200 members during the first year of Forum Nokia Pro’s life.
Lee Epting, Forum Nokia vice president, said: The volumes are getting significant. When you are talking about 150,000 unique visitors a day, 400,000 downloads of SDKs and documents a month, it gets very hard to understand what’s happening.
The idea is to understand who’s developing and their development cycles. Plus get feedback from companies through forums. We need more statistics to support our business.
Subscriptions to companies’ developers networks are being seen as a valuable way for ISVs to build a loyal customer base among developers and stop individuals drifting between different vendors’ platforms or tools. BEA Systems Inc and IBM Inc during the last year launched separate subscription-based services to lock developers into their tools.
This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire
