Nokia expects 50 million new Symbian shipments

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Nokia has estimated it will sell more than 50 million of its new Symbian-based smartphones.

Speaking at the opening of Nokia World, Niklas Savander, executive vice president of markets at the Finnish firm, said this was a “very conservative” prediction as well.

“I’m the head of sales, so I guess I should know. We expect big things,” he added.

The newly announced phones include the Nokia E7, C7 and C6 devices, which will line up alongside the N8 to form the new Symbian family of products.

Savander also made a somewhat mocking remark over the Apple Antennagate saga, saying Nokia devices perform “day in, day out, no matter how you hold them.”

Developer announcement

Hardware is just part of the story at Nokia World and the manufacturer has also announced improvements to its developer tools to make it easier for people to build apps for the company’s phones.

The enhancements have achieved a 70 per cent reduction in the number of lines of code needed when developing for the company's Symbian devices.

Nokia has also claimed to have created the first touch-enabled software development kit in the industry, again designed to offer greater simplicity.

As for the Ovi Store, it has been given a new look to make it quicker to both find and make apps.

“We have made it much simpler, removed obstacles and made it more lucrative for people to build apps for our phones,” said Purnima Kochikar, vice president for Forum Nokia.

“We believe that this will convince more developers to build apps for the millions of people, in more than 190 countries, that are using the Ovi Store on their Nokia devices.”

The announcements come less than a week after Apple made some changes to its own developer tools, relaxing them to open the door for Adobe Flash.

Apple also published its App Store Review Guidelines to specify how apps submissions are reviewed for App Store inclusion.

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