The AppCampus was launched March 26 at the Aalto Centre for Entrepreneurship (AaltoACE) in Otaniemi, Espoo, Finland. Each of the participating companies plans to contribute €9 million ($12 million) over three years starting next month.
The program will focus on giving students and startups the tools, training, funding, and infrastructure to create great apps for the Windows phone ecosystem, as well as for all Nokia platforms, including the Series 40, Symbian, and HTLM5 languages.
Qualified projects from the StartUp Sauna and Summer of Startups will be encouraged to apply to the AppCampus for support. And it will not be limited to Finnish startups or developers. According to Will Cardwell, head of AaltoACE, this initiative is meant to be an extremely competitive international program attracting the best ideas from around the world. There are no restrictions on the location of applicants.
The grant application process for mobile entrepreneurs will start in May through the AppCampus Website. After approval, the first grants will be available at the end of June, and they will be renewed in monthly cycles.
After obtaining a grant, developers and teams will be asked to commit to six months of developing apps exclusively on the AppCampus platforms. The participants will retain the full intellectual property rights of their innovations. Cardwell said at a press event on March 26 that the first apps should be on the market by the first quarter of next year.
The program is expected to produce enterprise apps. "It is fair to assume that healthcare, education, and energy are probably going to be in the mix," said Cardwell. "All Windows phones and Nokia software platforms are on the table."
The AppCampus could improve Nokia's position in the smartphone market. By adding good and varied apps, which seem to be what the the Nokia phones are lacking, the company increases the possibility of consumers choosing one of its phones as their next mobile phone purchase. The Helsinki Times reported on a recent survey in which 37 percent of respondents said their next mobile phone would be a Nokia.
However, it’s too soon to tell whether the AppCampus will help put Nokia back in place as a mobile phone world leader. But at least the project could give Nokia a competitive place among manufacturers. There may even be some advantage in the first six months of exclusivity that developers agree to respect when being accepted into the AppCampus program.
In September, Nokia World 2012 will be held for the first time in Finland instead of London. And it just might surprise us with great news in the mobile and tablet fronts. After all, Nokia plans to release Windows 8 tablets.
At the very least, the AppCampus program promises to produce a new generation of innovative mobile startups.
as I've said before: to kill the FAX machine you must first kill the printer. FAX can easilly be adapted to use IP rather than POTS
The real technology needed is found in LibreOffice: Instead of the PRINT button I can press the SEND button, and LibreOffice will
"print" my document as .pdf format to a temp. file
launch my regular e/mail program
attach the temp pdf file to my e/mail
allow me to proceed with e/mail rather than printing
the key is: it's seamless -- just as easy as pressing the print button
only now: I don't have to go to the printer, get the print, and then truck it over to the fax machine and fuss with getting a connection. and I can request an acknowlegement from the recipient
so: what you do: chuck the printer and the FAX and install SCANNERs ONLY ( for existing paperwork only )
ps
if you have PGP_Desktop\Outlook or GnuPG\Thunderbird you can also:
sign
encrypt
the digital signature can be used to prevent e/mail forgeries, known as targeted phishing attacks
targeted phishing attacks are getting much better a fooling their victims, particularly due to all the STOLED IDENTITY INFO available to the Hackers
"We never can tell" True. I also agree with you on what Nokia's focus should be, at least for now.
Users have repetedly been complaining about not having enough or good apps. In this sense, the AppCampus will be a good solution for retaining existing users giving them something to look forward to.
The market that belongs to iPhone is not going to change to Nokia's smartphones; that's a lost market for Nokia. But what do you think Android users could do if the new apps resulting from the AppCampus are really good and varied?
Yes, this is good PR for Nokia. On one hand, I would say that if there is life there is hope, and if there is hope there is always a possibility to change the course of the events no matter how bad the situation is. On the other, honestly, sometimes I just think that what Nokia needs is Stephen Elop to leave the company, and a Finnish CEO to take his place.
We all know Nokia phones need good and more apps. At least this will happen, and will keep some users happy.
Lacking good and varied apps is precisely what Nokia phone users complain most often. If we compare and see the apps you can get for an iPhone you immediately see why iPhone is where it is. The AppCampus might translate in blooming new, varied and good apps for all the Nokia platforms. Does this will help the comany to regain its position in the market? Maybe. Maybe not.
The evolution of the AppCampus will definitely be an interesting spot to watch from now on, and until the beginning of next year when the first apps will be in the market.
Yes Ariella. That is exactly what someone like me - Nokia phone user is looking out to read or hear about the company. The positive outlook presents in the link enough to bring Nokia back to its best?
Well, if just over 1/3 of the respondents are hoping to go for Nokia, then we need to wait for this to happen. In actual fact, European market smartphone share portion is already controlled by iPhone and Android. Can Nokia Lumia smartphone dethrone iPhone or Android?
The survey you link to is fairly positive for Nokia and also points to the downward spiral of Blackberry: "According to the study, 36.9 per cent of respondents plan to buy as their next mobile phone a Nokia model. The Finnish brand is more than 12 per cent ahead of its closest rival, second-place Apple, with only 24.8 per cent of respondents planning to buy the latter. Third place was taken by BlackBerry with 20.8 per cent."
We never can tell. But i think Nokia primary focus should be on developing markets. Already Nokia has lost the battle to iPhones and Androids even the tiny market portion will now be shared with its co-struggler RIM Blackberry in Europe and North & South Americas.
Cool initiative, Susan. Thank you for telling us about it. I don't think anything could help Nokia regain "world leader" status in the mobile realm. But this certainly gets it some good PR.
The establishment of the Appcampus is an evidence of Nokia currently lacking experienced app developers' attention (since the share of Windows OS users is negligible). The creation of its own pool by deploying potential developers and giving them a platform and funding, should give benefits to Nokia smartphones and MS OSs in both the shorter and longer-term as we might see quality apps for the concerned platforms as well. The tactic of allowing these app developers to retain the intellectual property rights should further encourage young developers as the recognition that those developers gain from the projects should be amongst the strongest motivating factors.
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On March 1, 2012, a project for crowdsourced legislation was launched in Finland. It is called The Open Ministry (Avoin ministeriö, in Finnish), and it is the world’s first Internet-based legislation platform, where anyone can propose a new law to be evaluated by the Finnish Parliament.
Finnish startups are flowering. Nothing seems to stop them. Silicon Valley investors find them interesting, worth the trip to the Nordic latitudes, and worth their investment. There is a startup revolution in Finland.
The Republic of Seychelles is an isolated tropical archipelago of outstanding natural beauty. It comprises about 115 granite and coral islands in the western part of the Indian Ocean. Temperatures remain constant throughout the year at 24-31 degrees Celsius or 75-88 Fahrenheit. The largest and most economically important island is Mahé. Victoria is its capital. Until now, tourism has been the main business and source of income.
Some argue that humans will inexorably be replaced by technology in the near future in many middle-class jobs. A different viewpoint holds that an evolutionary process is affecting some of the professions. They won’t disappear, but they will change, and new ones will be created. The kids of today will have jobs that haven’t been invented yet. Not many of them will be grocery clerks, customer service agents, or hotel concierges -- simply because those positions won’t exist anymore.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
Subsidized handsets, rather than locked handsets, should be the focus of regulators. We're not getting good deals, not fostering innovation, and weakening our power as buyers.
A survey by JD Powers found that customer interest in product features is lessening as phones evolve. Rather than features, price is driving purchases, and that change could have a dramatic impact on how IT departments secure these devices.
The iPad Mini is the latest iteration of the exploding tablet category. Because most tablets are WiFi-only, they create a new kind of mobile network. The problem is that we don't have issues like roaming and security defined for this new world.
When whole departments do BYOD and consumerization, it's a threat to IT and the whole organization. It's also an emerging business technology cliché you'll be sick of soon enough.
For the frazzled, hurried consumer, waiting in line has become a major bugaboo. A survey by Great Clips has found that 94 percent will wait less than 10 minutes to check out at a store. Self-check-in has become popular among airlines and is now making its way into the retail marketplace. Using smartphones, consumers can order items and pick them up, cutting down on their wait time.
Integration can be tough when it comes to bringing disparate systems and applications together. But Internet-facing devices like the iPhone remind us on a daily basis that integrations have to make sense in the "minds" of individuals and businesses, no matter how good they might be technologically.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Subsidized handsets, rather than locked handsets, should be the focus of regulators. We're not getting good deals, not fostering innovation, and weakening our power as buyers.
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