Nokia Corp. hired a former Palm Inc. executive to head up its worldwide developer efforts, a move that highlights Nokia’s continuing focus on its developer and licensing business and the potentially troublesome issues in the space.
Lee Epting started as Nokia’s vice president of developer operations in March, relocating her family from their warm Silicon Valley home to one near Nokia’s corporate headquarters in Helsinki, Finland.
Epting hails from Palm, where she started in 1997 and oversaw the launch of the first Palm Pilot Pro. Epting later followed fellow Palm executives Jeffrey Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky to help start their new company, Handspring Inc. There Epting managed the company’s developer efforts for its personal digital assistant devices and later the Treo mobile phone/PDA.
Epting will oversee Nokia’s extensive developer business, which covers the company’s Forum Nokia operation. Forum Nokia connects developers and applications with carriers and other distribution points. Epting will also oversee development efforts around Nokia’s Series 60 smart phone platform.
“From my perspective … I’m managing a community,” Epting said. “It’s my team’s job to bring as much value to that community as we can.”
Epting said she will work to support developers working on all types of Nokia phones, from its low-end models to its more advanced devices. Further, she said she will work to support development efforts for the Series 60 platform, which is based on the Symbian OS. Epting said she hopes to “paint a path” for developers in order to foster the creation of profitable applications.
“I guess the main objective here is to articulate to developers why our platform is a superior platform, and to have in place a path for success for developers,” Epting said. “I believe that some of it isn’t as articulated as it could be.”
Nokia has long had the reputation of being a closed, relatively reserved company, and Epting said she will work to make sure Nokia is more open with its development community.
“I hope that’s something that will be different,” she said.
But overshadowing Epting’s efforts with Nokia’s development community is another issue, one she declined to address but one that could evolve into a concern for the company.
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Siemens, Panasonic and Sendo have licensed Nokia’s Series 60 platform to build their own phones, and Epting is overseeing the development efforts for those phones as well.
Such a situation is notable because Palm-Epting’s former employer-plays a similar role by licensing out its operating system to rival device makers.
Indeed, Palm is in the process of separating its hardware and software businesses in part to address the potential conflicts related to its licensing business. Some have pointed out that Palm OS licensees like Handspring could raise concerns over the Palm OS software since Palm itself owns and manages the software and uses it in its own devices-all the while competing with licensees like Handspring.
Such situations are not limited to Palm and Nokia, however. Motorola Inc. licenses its Innovative Convergence platform to rival device makers, and Ericsson offers a similar phone reference design.
