Microsoft, Nokia Guide Symbian Developers to Windows Phone Platform
Microsoft and Nokia have just made their next step towards helping Symbian developers bring their applications to the Windows Phone platform. Microsoft and Nokia released a white paper for developers to explain what they need to know to transit from Symbian Qt to Windows Phone. Three jointly developed guides and tools are now available on the Windows Phone API mapping tool.
In addition Microsoft will be running a series of developer events, part of the “Nokia Windows Phone Training” roadshow, which will kick start in Paris today. The tools and documentation kits, Windows Phone Guide for Symbian Qt Application Developers white paper, addition of Symbian Qt to the Windows Phone API mapping tool, and Nokia Windows Phone Training roadshow, can be downloaded from the Windows Phone Developer Blog site.
The Windows Phone API mapping tool already supports Android and iOS platforms, and is a middleware interface to create APIs from one platform to Windows Phone platform.
All these developments are aimed at promoting a smooth transition from the Symbian operating system to the Windows Phone platform, after Microsoft & Nokia agreement signed in early 2011 that will bring Microsoft’s OS to Nokia’s devices.
“The addition of Symbian Qt to the Windows Phone API mapping tool is another perk we wanted to deliver in order to speed up the learning curve to Windows Phone,” Jean-Christophe Cimetiere, sr. technical evangelist, Microsoft, notes in the blog post. “For this first iteration of the mapping, we’ve focused on the core libraries for Qt 4.7 for Symbian QtCore, QtGui, QtLocation, QtNetwork, QtSensors, QtSql, QtXml, QtWebKit, QML Elements, and QML Components.”
Nokia phone developers benefit, as they’re channeled to turn their attention to Windows, while Microsoft is busy strengthening their relationships with other players to build a mobile ecosystem around their mobile platform. Microsoft has recently announced inclusion of native Metro applications for Windows 8 using XAML, C#, Visual Basic, C++, HTML5 and more for developers.
Its mobile platform, and especially Windows 8, is one of the important areas that Microsoft is focusing on, which the company is projecting as a true cloud-ready operating system. Microsoft teamed up with Samsung to unveil a new tablet to run on Windows 8, showcasing the capabilities of its revamped system.
Nokia is still a dominating player in the mobile market share and its partnership with Microsoft will further strengthen it to create a new global mobile ecosystem. Microsoft is still way behind Apple and Android in terms of market share, but with Windows 8, it could change course.
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