New and improved developer services on Forum Nokia

GLOBAL – Nokia has unveiled a bevy of new measures that make it easier and less expensive for developers to test and market new apps. Good news for developers is also good news for users, of course, since making Symbian apps more easy to create and sell means more goodies for all of us to play with. Read on for the full details.

Free signing – This was unveiled as a public beta back in June, but now it’s official. Publishers no longer have to pay to get a Publisher ID or to have their apps signed. Developers can have their Qt Symbian, Symbian C++ and Flash Lite apps, and their Symbian themes signed for free. The new process comes in as part of their app submission to publish on Ovi Store.

Mob4Hire – Testing new apps can be a lengthy and arduous process – and it’s not always easy to see the flaws in something you’ve created yourself. What’s more, you probably haven’t got access to all the handsets your users will have. For these reasons, getting someone else to do it for you sounds like a great idea. Forum Nokia has expanded its user experience programme to include user testing by everyday mobile users – Mob4Hire: 42,000 users with 25,000 different handsets between them. More details are on the User Experience services page.

Remote Device Access – If you aren’t ready for mob rule, then there are two types of remote device access available, allowing developers to test their apps on devices over the Web. There’s a free service called Remote Device Access (link requires Forum Nokia registration) and a more sophisticated paid service run by DeviceAnywhere called the Forum Nokia Virtual Developer Lab.

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Ovi Marketing Tools – This free service allows developers to create advertising banners for their apps through a simple, seven-step wizard, producing ads in both IAB web formats and to .mobi specifications. The service now includes Facebook integration and media buying options, and is available in eight languages.

Ovi Store Stats – last but not least, now you’ve created, tested, published and marketed your app, it’s more easy than ever to find out how it’s doing. There’s now one official location for publishers to find out the latest and historical information about how their apps are selling: Ovi Store statistics.

Forum Nokia expects to able to announce some additional new measures to help developers at the Nokia World / Nokia Developer Summit event on September 14/15 in London.