While Nokia World 2010 has an obvious focus on hardware, it's software and the support and tools that Nokia provides developers that will be crucial in terms of success for the wider ecosystem.

It was a subject taken up by Purnima Kochikar, who's vice president of the 150-strong Forum Nokia & Developer Community.

"We're listening to developers and are working hard to improve the end to end experience, ensuring developers have an improved return on investment," she explained.

"We are making it easier for you to write apps that consumers can buy in their local currency and are localised in their own language."

Further easing the situation is the news that Nokia will take over the troublesome app signing process, at least for the Express signing, for Symbian and Java apps released on Ovi Store, saving developers time and money.

More complex or intrusive apps will have to signed by the developer as previously before being submitted to Nokia.

Going everywhere

More generally, Kochikar stressed the opportunities provided by the wide range and volume of devices Nokia sells globally.

For example, it shipped 364 million mobiles in 2009 with the Java platform, while its new Java SDK for Series 40 Touch and Type is labeled as "bringing mobile internet to the next billion people".

"There is a hunger for apps on these devices, and people are willing to pay for the right experience," she said.

Meanwhile, at the high end of the market, Kochikar said the 175 million Symbian devices active, combined with 45 million touch smartphone users and the more than 50 million Symbian^3 devices Nokia predicts it will sell mean there are plenty of consumers to target.

Write once

Acting as a bridge across all of them are tools such as Qt, which means developers can target both feature phones and Symbian devices using the same code.

"Not only can you build apps for all Nokia devices using Qt, but they requires 70 percent less lines of code," Kochikar pointed out.