Apps. Every smartphone platform needs apps. The more the better. Games. News. Bingo. Reddit. Apps are king on mobile devices, just as content is royalty online.
This fact makes it hard for new platforms to emerge in the mobile space – the chicken/egg problem, in this case a user level/developer interest couplet, is a real and present danger for new mobile lines. Thus bringing the biggest names in apps to a smaller ecosystem is always news.
It’s even more so when the apps coming to the small platform are set to land on only a certain subset of handsets that run that specific operating system. WPCentral, lay it down:
[I]t has been confirmed that those super popular Zynga games—Draw Something and Words with Friends—will be coming this fall exclusively to Nokia Lumia phones for the first 60 days.
Nokia, Microsoft’s bannerman in the mobile world, has managed to snag a two month bout of ‘neiner-neiner’ for both apps, which could each make a splash when they land on the Windows Phone Marketplace. This is bound to annoy owners of HTC, Samsung, and other Windows Phone handsets.
I doubt that Nokia minds too much. Anything that it can do to differentiate its handsets from others makes it stand out, and thus stand to sell more. Windows Phone needs more apps like this to bring it to parity with its main rivals, iOS and Android, both of which have hundreds of top apps that Windows Phone yet lacks.
The 💜 of EU tech
The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
Top Image Credit: Samuel Ericson
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.