The start of sales of the new Nokia X in the Kenyan market is expected to provide local Android developers additional revenue opportunity because Nokia is calling out to all local developers to embrace the new opportunities by publishing their existing apps to the Nokia store.
The company has already tested more than 100,000 Android apps and approximately 75 percent are directly compatible and ready to be published to the Nokia Store. For the 25 percent that require change, Nokia will be providing a plugin package for the Android SDK, including the services APIs and the Nokia X emulator.
According to Nokia’s Developer Relations lead in East Africa, Moses Sitati, the company is keen to provide local developers with additional platforms to promote their apps thus Nokia X offers an additional channel to market and as a new revenue opportunity.
“Nokia’s market leadership and brand strength in the fast-growing smartphone and mobile app market provides the launchpad for developer’s success. With Nokia X, developers can reach an untapped pool of savvy and app hungry smartphone users in Kenya and around the world,” continues Sitati.
He noted that publishing existing Android apps for Nokia will not only enable the developers to access new market for their existing apps but also provide their existing apps with monetization mechanisms for emerging markets.
“If your app uses Google services for maps, push notifications or in-app payments, you will need to replace these APIs with Nokia-specific APIs, which have been built to work almost identically to those they replace. Nokia services have been designed to minimize porting effort for apps using corresponding Google services, and to allow developers develop and distribute a single APK targeting both ecosystems,” he said.
