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Nokia is on the hunt for Windows Phone apps.
The beleaguered phone maker today launched Code Warrior, a site where Windows Phone users and developers can propose ideas for apps and vote on them. Developers can then battle it out to create the best app for the challenge and earn the bounty that has been put on the app.
“Just because you’re a developer, does not mean you are innovative,” Chanse Arrington, head of Nokia’s developer and content marketing for North America, said at the Mobile Monday Silicon Valley event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. “Sometimes you need an idea.”
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Arrington also touched on the tentative but increasing success of Nokia’s new Lumia 900. The company is banking on strong sales for that smartphone and other Windows Phone devices to get itself back on more solid footing in the scrum with the likes of Apple and Samsung.
In the Code Warrior initiative, bounties range from points to devices to actual cash, backed by Nokia or Microsoft. How much consumers vote an idea up or down will determine the value of the bounty.
To promote Code Warrior, a 14-city “hack-athon” tour will kick off in Houston, Texas, on May 10. Fourteen hundred devices will be offered as prizes during this tour.
According to the event description:
The rules are simple. Build an app listed on the “bounty board”. Satisfying a bounty awards you the associated prize, and we will be putting up 100 Nokia Lumia devices per city as the initial prize pool. In addition, the top 3 created apps, top student created app, and best dressed Bounty Hunter (use your imagination!) will be awarded extra prizes.
After his presentation, Arrington told CNET that he considers app development a top priority for Nokia.
“Would you buy a phone that doesn’t have apps?” he asked. “It’s just a matter of making sure that we support developers better than anyone else…. Whatever they need, we get it for them.”
Nokia Lumia 900 (photos)
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