The Launch of the Nokia Asha 300 and the Importance of Applications for Mobile Platforms

Several days ago, Nokia launched the Asha 300 in Indonesia aimed at the middle to lower market segment in Indonesia, the Asha 300. With decent technical specifications, Asha 300 has a fairly affordable price range for IDR 1 million. 300 Asha is a S40-based Nokia mobile phone which had sold more than 1.5 billion units since the first appearance through the Nokia 7110 in 2007. This time I won't discuss about the cell phone itself, you can read it in the other gadget blogs. I think it is interesting this time as Nokia took a big name application to promote his cell phone.

Rovio Mobile has suddenly become famous in the mobile world. Angry Birds has been such a phenomenal game this past two years. It has been downloaded (and purchased) more than 700 million times. Angry Birds however, is only one out of the 52 games made by Rovio. You could say that previous fifty-one have failed. You can read this article to find out more about the history of Rovio.

Back to the launch of Asha 300, Nokia took Angry Birds as a selling point. Asha Series is the only mobile phone product that isn't purely smartphone and can play this popular game. Nokia also brought Peter Vesterbacka, a Mighty Eagle or Rovio's Chief Marketing Officer, to attend and give discourses to local developers who has the vision of similar success.

If it has no leading applications, a mobile platforms is meant for not having anything. Zip. Zero. Nada. Though it's a little bit late bialso realized by Nokia. Nokia Indonesia is very keen for taking the developer community and holding a road show in various cities. The result is quite obvious, there are already 10 thousand local developers who joined Nokia developer community. There are approximately 3000 applications have been entered into the Nokia Store and there are 50 universities collaborated with Nokia.

I still remember 5 years ago when the iPhone was still the initial launch. All phones were solely relying on the technical specification without any measurable comparison between one platform and another. Now, with the increasingly important role of the application platform success, mobile phone vendors are "requested" to support for popular application developers and they are even willing to give these things exclusively thus the applications wouldn't be available on other platforms.

In the media we know the term "content is king", similar terms may be pinned to the applications on mobile platforms. Instagram for iPhone, Google's that is fully optimized for Android games, Xbox Live connectivity and Windows Phone - those are some examples of top applications in their respective mobile platforms.

Asha now took Angry Birds as a flagship application. It isn't exclusive but rather as a platform for smartphone for affordable prices. This is a victory. Of course this isn't the victory of vendor or platform. This is a victory for developers who are able to prove that they made the application which isn't merely a complement; however it's  a life and death determinantand the success-failure of a mobile platform.