Will Symbian and MeeGo be Nokia's saviour?

The Nokia E7 is the most business-centric with a sliding QWERTY keyboard in an ultra-thin shell.

The Nokia N9 has not officially been announced yet, but a Nokia representative close to the situation has said the N9 will be coming out in January.

The Nokia N9 will be the first MeeGo-based device and although few details are known, the N9 does look very similar to the E7, also with a sliding QWERTY keyboard.

Applications

The apps market is somewhere Nokia has not managed to break yet.

The manufacturer current only offers 6,000 applications for users to download and these are limited by which phone you have.

Many developers have had more than 10 million application download and, of late, the Ovi Store has been experiencing two million downloads a day.

Nokia's Ovi Store has failed to take off in the same way with developers as the iPhone and Android stores have, but the store is now getting attention and Nokia has just released the Qt SDK to developers.

Nokia also announced at Nokia World that developers can now offer in-app purchases and the company has made it easier for developers to produce apps by slimming down the Qt code to make it more accessible.

To appeal to more consumers, developers can now charge for their app via subscription, micro transaction or try and buy' so you can download applications on trial before committing to buy them.

To try and drum up interest from networks, Nokia is also working with Orange to offer Ovi applications through its Orange Application Shop.

Nokia's Ovi Store with Orange will be accessible by Orange customers in the UK and France in 2011 and Orange customers will be able to buy applications through their Orange bill.

Nokia is certainly attempting to reinvigorate the brand by introducing new executives (and scrapping old ones), redeveloping its operating systems after a fair while using antiquated platforms and launching premium devices.

However, Android is growing in momentum and that could topple Nokia's power. Until Nokia has proven success with Symbian^3, Symbian^4 and MeeGo, the Finnish company has a very real struggle ahead.

Clare Hopping
Freelance writer

Clare is the founder of Blue Cactus Digital, a digital marketing company that helps ethical and sustainability-focused businesses grow their customer base.

Prior to becoming a marketer, Clare was a journalist, working at a range of mobile device-focused outlets including Know Your Mobile before moving into freelance life.

As a freelance writer, she drew on her expertise in mobility to write features and guides for ITPro, as well as regularly writing news stories on a wide range of topics.