Computer become phones and phones become computers.

Hats off and a full 10 out of 10 for Nokia's willingness to try to break down the corporate barriers between them and the Developer Community. Quite an open and honest set of presentations (with much audience feedback) from Nokia with a little real-world input from a some Developers.

Nokia's motivation for encouraging development of apps via Ovi seems very simple and straight forward, it helps them sell more phones if the phones can do more. Apple have proved this to be the case and Nokia want to use the same business model. However, Nokia have a bit of a problem when compared to Apple in the number of different devices that apps can be deployed to. Apple just have the iPhone/iTouch but Nokia have about 100 different devices that could download apps. This leads to some complexity. However, as the majority of Ovi Store app downloads are to the 5800 and N97 (both touch screen) targeting these two devices helps.

Having apps for phones is obviously nothing new. The thing that makes it all work and has made it all take off so much (Nokia say Ovi Store downloads are growing at 70% per month) is having a simple download and install machanism on the phone (Ovi Client) and Server to present relevant apps to the phone user (Ovi Store). This works for Apple too and is why Windows Mobile apps don't get a look in.

What makes a good app? The world have moved on from there being a small number of high investment apps to a large number of low investment apps. The winners now are "Fun and Useful" and "Viral and Silly", with those that stand out from the crowd get the most downloads.

So this was all good stuff. The only problem is the complexity involved in creating and publishing applications. When it takes an expert Developer a day to package and publish an app there must be a better way. And I'm am very sorry to say it seems that it is much easier to create a Windows Mobile app (using Visual Studio 2008 and the SDKs and emulators) rather than the various tools and technologies from Nokia.

Overall 4 out of 5.