Nokia giving developers free E7 and free WP7 device

Nokia's decision to switch from Symbian to Windows Phone 7 might not have been met with glee from many developers, but the company looks to be addressing its coding community in a decent way. SlashGear has been passed details of an email sent to Nokia Launchpad program members, in which they're promised a free Nokia E7 together with "one free Nokia WP7 device, as soon as it becomes available."

Launchpad is Nokia's mobile app development program, usually priced at €300 annually but currently free for the first year. Membership is available – on an approved application basis – for individuals and companies, and regularly includes early access to APIs and SDKs, promotions in the Ovi Store and invitations to training events.

As well as free devices, however, this new change will see free tech support on all Nokia technologies for the next three months (limited to ten tickets at most) and a free "user experience evaluation" of any apps developers have coded. There's also the promise of extended business development support. More on the Nokia change in our Stephen Elop interview from MWC 2011 this week.

[Thanks Anonymous!]

18 February 2011

Dear Launchpad member,

In light of the strategy announcement made by Nokia and Microsoft last week, we are writing to you today to assure you that our commitment to you and your work to develop innovative apps for Nokia devices remains as strong as ever.

We understand that you have a lot of questions, and want to reassure you that we understand and we are here to listen to your feedback and provide you with information. We encourage you to visit Nokia Conversations where you can find a great deal of information regarding the news http://conversations.nokia.com and which can help to answer some initial questions.

We are very energized by recent developments, and believe the opportunities to develop for Nokia devices are as exciting and lucrative today as they have ever been. In addition to the opportunities coming soon with Nokia and WP7, we have several new benefits to share with you today, intended to help accelerate your app business to reach the 225 million app-hungry Nokia smartphone owners worldwide today.

Today, Qt developers can target more than 100 million Nokia devices for their apps and we have announced that we plan to sell an additional 150 million Symbian devices. Nokia will continue to provide free Qt trainings to help you learn how to make the most of this sophisticated cross-development platform. We're enthusiastically meeting the demand, so please let us know whether you'd like a training set up in your area.

We are also excited to offer you one free admission to the next Nokia World/Nokia Developer Summit later this year. We will take care of the registration costs.

To assist you with your development activities in the near-term, we will ship one free Nokia E7 device to all program members. Additionally, we will send to you one free Nokia WP7 device, as soon as it becomes available.

To accelerate your mobile app development, we will provide free tech support on all Nokia technologies for the next three months (up to 10 tickets). Equally, if you would like to take advantage of a free User Experience evaluation of one of your apps, please let us know and we will work with you to make those arrangements.

We will also be extending our business development support to all Nokia developer and content program members who are currently developing apps for Nokia devices, and we will assist in publishing those apps in Nokia's Ovi Store. We will continue to offer ideas and guidance for ways to fully promote your published apps so that you can reap the rewards of your hard work.

If you have any questions, or need any help from us in the days ahead, we want you to know that you can count on us to be there for you. We are truly excited about working with you to discover new opportunities that will lead to future successes.