With Kenya being among the first wave of African countries where the Nokia X will start sales, local app developers stand a chance to benefit. The start of sales is expected to provide local Android developers additional revenue opportunity by offering new markets for their apps.
Nokia is encouraging all local developers to embrace the new opportunities X 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.
Nokia’s Developer Relations lead in East Africa, Moses Sitati 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.
Sitati emphasised that the company will continue offering opportunities to promote the apps to new users and potential customers through the Nokia Developer programs.