Nokia launches Ovi Happy Hour in Kampala

Nokia yesterday launched Ovi Happy Hour in a bid to get developers to embrace Ovi Store and develop applications for the Ugandan market. Developers and media presented their favorite applications in Ovi Store and Daniel Okalany, a developer won first prize and was rewarded with a Nokia X2. Daniel’s favourite application is Snaptu, a free application platform that runs on virtually every mobile phone, bundling more than 30 applications and 25 weblinks, allowing quick access to popular services like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and news, sports and entertainment websites. Jerome Osuna who presented SalesForce for symbian was the 2nd runner up and walked away with a portable charger. Ms Dorothy Ooko, Nokia’s Communications Manager for East and Southern Africa reassured developers of Nokia’s support for Symbian devices despite the adoption of the Windows 7 platform for smartphones. The change of strategy was announced last month with a partnership with Microsoft and a number of other changes in the company. Ovi Happy Hour will be a regular interactive activity for developers to see the opportunities of developing applications using Nokia Ovi store. Similar activities and events are in plan for bloggers and the media in a bid to increase awareness in Uganda. Joshua Twinamasiko, PC Tech Magazine’s cofounder pledged to provide simplified instructions for publishing to Ovi store using the app wizard, specifically targeting bloggers who aren’t developers. Nokia yesterday launched Ovi Happy Hour in a bid to get developers to embrace Ovi Store and develop applications for the Ugandan market. Developers and media presented their favorite applications in Ovi Store and Daniel Okalany, a developer won first prize and was rewarded with a Nokia X2. Daniel’s favourite application is Snaptu, a free application platform that runs on virtually every mobile phone,