Nokia’s approach when it comes to employees and developers is far from commendable. A developer for Nokia, Jan Ole Suhr who developed the chat client Gravity for the Symbian OS has been removed from Nokia’s Developer Program when he chose not to program the same software for the Windows Phone OS. This came to light only when he publicly revealed on Twitter why he had been removed from the Developer Program.
His decision to not develop the application for the Windows Phone was based on monetary reasons as Suhr said that his fortune came out of the Symbian OS and he chose not to write for the new OS because he wasn’t convinced that the return from the new application repository would be satisfactory. It appears that though Nokia was ready to take care of Suhr’s financial needs in return for him changing his views on the issue, the developer seemed adamant. Nokia has been trying to get developers to convert their applications from Symbian OS compatibility to Windows Phone as it is making every effort possible to get Symbian users to switch over to the Windows Phone i.e. retain current Nokia customers and prevent them from jumping ship to Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android.
Nokia seems to have tried several strategies to get Suhr back on board but they were all in vain. Suhr also said that the company had the audacity to tell him to return to them when he familiarizes himself with the Windows Phone 7. Gravity is hailed by many as the best Twitter client of all time across all the various platforms and it might seem like Suhr is deliberately steering away from a potentially rewarding opportunity. However, it looks like he is not happy with the math of the money and is probably looking to diversify considering that his entire developer business is in tune with Nokia. Suhr has revealed a possibility of developing applications for iOS and Android as well.
Meanwhile, Nokia sees some good news as the number of Lumia handsets that shipped in the first three months after its release is higher than the number of Apple iPhones or Samsung Android devices that did in the same time period. Though this might not mean much, it does appear to give Nokia some respite from the constant flow of bad news regarding the Lumia’s failure.
