Amid the excitement of the record-breaking Windows Phone hackathon event over the weekend in Bandung, a little bit of news may have slipped past the radars of some people. We actually posted it as part of our recap of the event but it’s worth mentioning in a separate post as we now have more details.
At the end of Nokia Lumia Developer Day in Bandung on Sunday, Narenda Wicaksono, Developer Outreach manager for Nokia Southeast Asia threw down a challenge for mobile app developers across Indonesia. The Lumia Apps Challenge lets developers who were not at the event to participate in a chance to win a Nokia Lumia 710.
To qualify, developers are asked to build a prototype app using the Windows Phone SDK, register and post descriptions and screenshots of the app on the Nokia Indonesia Community site by 31 March.
For developers whose apps have been approved, Nokia will deliver a Lumia 710 for further app development and within 30 days, the app has to be published on the Windows Phone Marketplace. Those who managed to list three apps on the Marketplace before 30 June 2012 will get to keep the phones for themselves, while those who did not will have to return the phones.
The app can’t be just any app however. It has to be original, unique, not available on other platforms, carries a local flavor, and maximizes the Windows Phone API.
Why is Nokia doing this? It knows that smartphones are now all about applications. It may have been quite late in the game but it’s giving it its best shot. Nokia’s developer community in Indonesia is among the largest and most enthusiastic bunch as we saw over the weekend in Bandung with around 1000 developers attending the event intended for “only” 800.
When it comes to mobile ecosystems, it’s never the number of apps that matter, but what apps are available, especially those considered as “killer apps”.
Of course, Windows Phone apps are not limited to Nokia’s phones but by embracing developers this early, Nokia is working to make sure that consumers have more reasons to adopt its Lumia phones over its competitors’.
Even though Windows Phone devices are available from other vendors such as HTC and Samsung, none of them have made the push to promote their own devices which means that at least at this stage, Windows Phone in Indonesia will be strongly associated with the Lumia phones.
