Nokia officially launched the Lumia 1020 yesterday with its 41-megapixel camera. But equally as important was the announcement that Windows phone and the new Lumia 1020 will be adding major apps like Vine, CNN, Vyclone, Yelp, Foursquare, Path, Flipboard, and Hipstamatic in the near future.
This is big news because while the Nokia Lumia 1020 is a great device, it’ll be useless without a good app ecosystem to create a great user experience.
As reported by pcmag.com:
“Alongside the Lumia 1020, a number of popular apps are making their way onto the Windows phone platform, including the social network Path, Twitter’s video-sharing app Vine and the social news service Flipboard, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop announced.”
And while these apps aren’t available immediately, Nokia and the Windows team seem to be working diligently to build out their app ecosystem. As they realize that is a crucial factor if they are to be seriously considered the third choice along with Apple and Samsung in the mobile computing conversation.
According to techcrunch.com:
“Nokia could have played this up more today, and they undoubtedly will in the coming months. Hipstamatic’s Oggl PRO, their application for the Lumia 1020, will work beautifully with the phone’s 41-megapixel camera, but it’s no Instagram in terms of traction. The addition of Vine could be a step toward convincing higher profile apps to join the Windows Phone 8 roster. An Instagram partnership, however, would seem unlikely as both Vine and Hipstamatic are direct competitors.
“’That disparity between our platform and other platforms that folks write about is going away,’ Nokia Global Vice President and General Manager Bryan Biniak said in a small presentation this afternoon.
“According to Biniak, the partnerships with video and photo apps like Vyclone, Hipstamatic, and Flipboard resulted from developing the Lumia 1020 into a photographic powerhouse. For visually oriented apps, providing a great raw image is incredibly motivating. And it probably is.”
And of course that’s the basic premise of all computing: fusing together great hardware with great software. And Nokia and Windows are attempting to execute that task.
App availability has been an issue for other platforms aside from Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, as developers focus on where the numbers and the money are. But with the Nokia Lumia 1020 they’ve made a compelling case on the hardware side, and they’re hoping the developers will follow. They’re definitely in a better position to capitalize on the No. 3 spot in smartphone market over the Canadian-based Blackberry.
