Nokia launches new mobile application development tools with Aptana

Nokia and Aptana have announced a new set of development tools to help developers create mobile apps for Nokia devices. Nokia WRT (Web Runtime) and the Nokia WRT Plug-in for Aptana Studio will help third-party developers to create and deploy apps for Nokia. The latest version of Nokia WRT will also allow Nokia users to put any of these third-party widgets and apps on the homescreens of their devices.

Up until now, each Nokia device has required a different set of specialised skills and software to create apps for it. But the new release from Nokia will allow developers to create apps in JavaScript that will work across all of it’s devices.

Aptana is a cloud-based services expert – it’s hosted services will allow developers to fully test, debug and deploy their applications. It will also provide cloud-hosting support for applications-  Aptana Cloud Connect can push data to mobile apps.

Nokia WRT Plug-in for Aptana Studio is currently available to Forum Nokia Pro, Launchpad and Champions members. Both Nokia WRT and Aptana Studio can be downloaded and used for free at www.aptana.com. Aptana Cloud Connect is initially free for new users, and then costs about $0.65 cents per day.

From the release:

“Extending Aptana’s suite of Web development tools to meet the needs of developers using Nokia WRT has delivered significant value and ease to the Nokia developer community,” said Craig Cumberland of Nokia, team leader for Nokia WRT Plug-In for Aptana Studio. “Aptana Studio has become very popular in the web development and Eclipse communities. With a current rate of more than 200,000 downloads a month, Aptana is a driving force in making Web developers world-wide aware of the kinds of mobile applications they can create using Nokia WRT.”

“We think Nokia’s latest breakthrough in mobile Web applications will be very exciting to web developers around the globe.” said Paul Colton, CEO of Aptana. “With Nokia’s world-wide distribution of millions of devices and the breakthrough ability to create feature rich web applications that make the most of the devices upon which they run, we expect to see lots of innovation and applications for nearly everything under the sun coming from web developers using Nokia WRT.”

What we think?

So this would be what Nokia meant when they said they were opening their arms to third-party app developers earlier today! To be honest, I hadn’t realised just how bad things were for third party developers at Nokia until I read the above. Requiring different specialist knowledge for each separate device is a crazy thing to require of developers… unless, that is, you’ve only realised recently that third-party apps are the way to go.