After raising more than $10 million on Kickstarter, smartwatch maker Pebble announced today that it has received $15 million in first round funding from Charles River Ventures.

That’s a pretty hefty sum for a company that was initially shot down by VCs, a blow that led to the Kickstarter campaign, one of the first big crowdfunding success stories. But after nabbing around 85,000 orders on Kickstarter and successfully kicking off Pebble shipments (despite significant delays), it’s not surprising to see investors taking a second look.

Pebble says the funding will let it expand its software engineering team, scale for demand, and grow its open development platform. (I backed Pebble via Kickstarter and am still waiting for my watch.)

Pebble could be credited with kicking off the latest smartwatch craze — now Apple, Google, and several other companies are rumored to be working on similar devices. The Pebble communicates with your smartphone to show incoming calls, email messages, and calendar entries, and it can also run apps on its own. After launching its initial SDK for developers in March, the company is today releasing an updated SDK that allows for two-way communication between your smartwatch and smartphone. That means Pebble apps can now be built to remotely control your smartphones or other web-connected devices.

The company is also launching a Sports API for fitness apps, which would give developers the ability to connect their apps with the smartwatch similar to RunKeeper’s integration a few weeks ago.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

Facebook has just unwrapped the latest version of its mobile SDK for iOS as well as some new features for its mobile tools. Reps for the company are calling these changes “the next evolution” of the company’s mobile-first strategy.

The new tools should, the company says, make it easier for mobile developers to play around with Open Graph features on smartphones and tablets. The SDKs also bring better tools for implementing Facebook Login.

Also, the company has announced a new program to help and promote the building of Facebook-integrated mobile apps. Called the Facebook Technology Partner program, it contains a list of SDKs and other developer tools built by Facebook and its partners — companies like Kinvey, Corona Labs, Parse, Sencha, and Adobe’s PhoneGap.

The Facebook SDK for iOS 3.5 is available today. It includes a new API for handling Open Graph objects without having to host webpages with Open Graph tags, a new Sharing dialog that works more smoothly with Open Graph actions, and an improved native login UX.

Finally, stats! Facebook reps told us via email that 81 percent of the top grossing 100 iOS apps and 70 percent of the top grossing 100 Android apps use Facebook in some way. For games, those numbers are slightly higher at 82 percent for iOS and 75 percent for Android.

---

Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

---

The photo-editing toolkit Aviary and chipmaker AMD announced today they’re partnering to give Windows 8 users and developers a better, faster set of photo-editing tools and features.

AMD Ventures put an undisclosed amount into the software startup, which enabled the development of Aviary’s new Windows 8 SDK that will “take advantage of unique AMD APU [accelerated processor unit] architectural advantages,” said company reps in a statement on the news.

Also, Aviary rolled out its first Windows 8. Aviary also has released its first Windows 8 app to show off the SDK, dog-food style.

Win8 developers will get access to a library of effects and filters for photo editing using the new Microsoft language C++ AMP.

That last bit stands for Accelerated Massive Parallelism and allows for computations to be performed in parallel on the graphics processing unit (GPU) cores inside the AMD chips instead of the central processing unit (CPU) cores. AMD says the whole shebang adds up to 16x-speed increases in processing photo editing changes. Hence the performance enhancements Aviary is so excited about today.

Aviary’s Photo Editor for Windows 8 is currently available in the Windows Store. With its current lineup of developer tools and consumer apps, the company says it’s processed 3 billion images from 35 million users to date.

---

Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

---

Developers hungry to start creating apps for the Pebble smartwatch will be both excited and dismayed come the second week of April. The company announced today that it is releasing its software developer kit at that time, but it will only include tools that let developers create “watch faces.”

Eric Migicovsky, the creator of the Pebble watch, uploaded a video to his Kickstarter campaign — which has made over $10 million — today, updating backers as to the company’s progress and the upcoming SDK. He explained that the this is a “work in progress,” and also promised that 99 percent of the application programming interfaces (APIs) within the SDK will change at some point in the future as they build out support for developers.

“It’s an important step for us to get something out there and really show you, potential developers, that we’re shifting our focus from the initial getting-started period of Pebble to supporting developers as the write applications for Pebble,” said Migicovsky in the video.

The SDK focuses on “watch faces,” or the interactive home screens that, well, tell time. It’s mostly buttons-oriented, which means developers could be clever and create games based on those button interactions. Migicovsky showed off some of the creations from the company’s beta test of the SDK, which included a dragon that winks on the minute, a Mario who gets a coin every minute, and a “Snake ala Nokia” game that is just like it sounds.

Pebble is otherwise equipped to handle multiple running apps on the watch, but will likely release support for that in future iterations of the SDK.

Migicovsky went on to say that Pebble thus far has been really focused on simply delivering the goods — getting the smartwatches into the public’s hands. Because of that, Pebble has not been as communicative as it would like with developers and hopes that the launch of this SDK will change that relationship.

Update 34 – Pebble Watchface SDK in April from Pebble Technology on Vimeo.

hat tip Slash Gear; Pebble image via Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

For PayPal’s grand plan of world payment domination to succeed, it needs developers. And to attract devs, it needs tools that don’t send them running to competitors.

So today, PayPal is launching a new set of developer tools for mobile payments at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. The company was actually the first financial company to offer APIs back in 2009, but it’s not shying away from the fact that those early tools aren’t exactly modern.

“It was confusing and cumbersome for developers to tie in [to the old APIs],” PayPal chief technology officer James Barrese told VentureBeat. “Our new API is a REST model, so it’s a very simple and intuitive way for an engineer to integrate with us. Over the years, PayPal [has] introduced different APIs to devs; now we have a chance to look and see what they really need.”

Among the new tools is a mobile SDK, which includes the ability to implement Card.io scanning technology into any app. PayPal bought Card.io last year; the technology lets you input credit card information simply by holding the card up to your phone’s camera. Popular apps like Uber and TaskRabbit have already integrated the technology.

The API also includes new JavaScript PayPal buttons, which let devs integrate PayPal into their mobile sites simply by inserting five lines of code.

On the API front, PayPal is adding new APIs built on REST, JSON, and OAuth. That’s good news for developers more familiar with those modern technologies. The company is also launching modernized versions of its most popular APIs, immediate settlement and payment processing, to speed up integration within apps.

The new APIs will also be able to tokenize credit cards, so developers won’t have to worry about the headache of PCI compliance.

“It basically solves a lot of the PCI and credit card industry challenges so we can make sure that customer information is absolutely secure, and it gives us capabilities to be able to reference card information,” Barrese said. “Developers want that — they don’t want to worry about any kind of security or being extra careful on their side [when it comes to credit card info].”

Additionally, PayPal is also relaunching its developer.paypal.com website to serve as a hub for all of its developer tools.

Barrese says PayPal will release more new APIs throughout the year, as it aims to build up its services. PayPal just scored a deal with point-of-sale company NCR to integrate PayPal technology into NCR apps. That’s pretty significant, given that NCR has been around for 128 years and is practically synonymous with point-of-sale technology. PayPal also has 23 retailers using its own in-store checkout technology, and more is sure to follow throughout the year.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

---

Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

---

Literally.

That’s the sad reality of app development today, and fewer than half of users who download an app actually use it more than once. Which is precisely the problem that Scringo, an innovative toolkit for developers, is launching to fix. Scringo lets you add features like in-app user messaging, “radar” to let app users know when other app users are near, an app activity feed that can be public, interactive developer feedback, and more, in just two to five minutes.

Oh, and it’s free.

“We’re here to manage three problems for app developers,” Scringo co-founder Ran Avrahamy told me from Tel Aviv. “Reach (or distribution), retention, and revenue.”

Those are pretty much the core challenges for appmakers: getting users, keeping users, and yes, making some cash from users. Avrahamy says, accurately, that there are hundreds of APIs and software development kit focusing on these issues. His goal was to bring together the key needed features in one single SDK.

Source: Scringo

Scringo’s customizable sidebar

Scringo’s SDK is cross-platform for Android and iOS, and integrates into your app in minutes, according to the company. Avrahamy isn’t a developer, and he says he’s integrated Scringo into an app in about five minutes. The fastest he’s seen a developer do it is just over two minutes.

With Scringo integrated into your app, you now have a new totally customizable sidebar that appears and disappears as needed, and contains social login capabilities, the ability for users to share their activity stream while in the app, and the communication functionality mentioned above. Radar helps app users connect with others, if they choose. And the feedback feature includes a “magic rating system,” which, when a user rates the app at five stars, prompts him or her to rate it on the app’s app store.

“The activity stream turns your app into a live dynamic community,” Avrahamy said. “One developer integrated it into a NASCAR app, so users could like cars, drivers, or tracks. Every time a user likes something, it shows up in the activity feed.

Scringo also includes an action button in the activity feed, so if the activity is, perhaps, buying a shirt, others who see it can also buy the T-shirt. Avrahamy calls it “enriching the inner virality of the app.” And a push notifications functionality that helps developers stay in contact with app users, and inform them of important new updates or capabilities.

All of the features are customizable in Scringo’s “Developer Zone,” where WYSIWIG tools control colors, icons styles, included features, and more, and update virtually instantly in the app itself.

Scringo 1.0 was in public beta for eight months, the company says, during which time about a thousand developers signed up and 260 apps actually went live on Google Play and Apple’s app store, ultimately reaching more than a million end users. That eight months of “intensive learning,” Avrahamy says, provided the data that informed what the company built into 2.0, which is its first fully released product.

That data includes how well the SDK helps app developers with their core problems.

“We compared apps before Scringo and after Scringo,” Avrahamy told me. “We saw a 97 percent increase in time spent in apps after integrating Scringo, and an 89 percent increase in recurring sessions.”

In other words, doubling the time, and doubling the uses. Or, as Avrahamy puts it, “we’re giving more reasons for the users to stay, and more reasons to come back.”

Source: Scringo

Scringo adds radar features to your app, optionally.

The big question, of course, is always monetization.

Developers have the option of using the monetization features that are currently built into the SDK, like buying T-shirts. And more monetization options will be coming soon, including a sort of app-store-for-developers inside the company’s developer zone, where developers who create interesting tools can offer them to other interested developers.

Currently, the revshare is 100% developers, 0% Scringo, which sounds like a great deal. Eventually it will likely be the now-standard 70-30 app store split.

The entire offering is very developer-centric and developer-friendly, so much so that Avrahamy calls the company a B-to-D company: business to developer.

“We have a mutual interest,” Avrahamy said, speaking of developers. “What we’re trying to bring is several options of monetization.”

photo credit: Sandeep Somasekharan via photopin cc

---

Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

---

The new SDK adds better mobile analytics that will help developers get metrics on sharing events and actual usage: what people are actually doing in their apps. In addition, the new tools will enable conversion logging from ads running in Facebook-connected iOS apps, and — currently in beta — logging of in-app purchases. Both of which, of course, will help Facebook-connected apps monetize better.

In addition, the new Facebook SDK adds better — and simpler — error handling.

“The SDK will now automatically categorize errors by common application handling behavior and provide helpers to simplify some common error response cases,” Facebook engineer Jason Clark posted today. ”In addition, the SDK will automatically handle a larger number of error cases including various iOS 6 cases such as password changes and expired tokens.”

It sounds like developers who have heard about the update are happy, so far, as the update is solving annoying problems. One, Jack Tihon from Endorse, said “It’s about time. I was living in a world of pain trying to unstick users with expired tokens due to various reasons (change password, sign out of devices, etc.”

With better tracking and analytics capabilities, the new SDK is almost starting to impinge on some of the functions of dedicated app analytics solutions like App Annie and Flurry, but of course in a purely Facebook-focused manner.

The update also includes bugfixes, is backwards compatible, and is available here.

photo credit: Steel Wool via photopin cc

---

Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

---

Feel like being disappointed? If your answer is “no,” then you probably shouldn’t read about the latest awesome rumor about the Apple TV.

Apple is allegedly planning a special event for March that could introduce a software development kit (SDK) for the Apple TV, according to a research note to investors from Jefferies analyst Peter Misek. Basically, an SDK would allow developers to start submitting applications that would be optimized for your television screen and available for purchase via Apple TV. It could be the start of a whole new era of TV — and even gaming — by some predictions.

Just like chronically incorrect Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, Misek is under the assumption that Apple will eventually release a television set, which is what the SDK would pave the way for. He also expects the fabled Apple television set will have a screen size in the range of 42-inches to 55-inches that costs about $1,500.

And while Misek doesn’t expect Apple to mention the TV set at the rumored March event, he does anticipate that the Apple TV SDK will be available in September or October of this year.

But before you get too excited, it’s worth noting that most analysts have been absolutely wrong regarding Apple’s television plans, as VentureBeat previously pointed out. There’s also the reports that Apple is putting any of its TV plans on hold, which seems likely considering the company’s lack of enthusiasm about Apple TV during its last quarterly earnings call. Also, Misek’s predictions were dismissed with a simple “Nope” by The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple, who has a decent track record for calling out Apple rumors.

Apple really hasn’t added much to the Apple TV in terms of media partners lately. Perhaps the biggest addition in months came yesterday with the news that HBO Go’s iOS app would now work on Apple TV via Airplay, but without a native app. That said, an SDK would certainly reinvigorate Apple’s set-top box.

Via MacRumors

Photo by Rob Boudon/Flickr

A crowning accomplishment of my teenage years was the custom version of Clue I made with a few friends, complete with a board, game pieces, and playing cards. Beyond the enjoyment of accusing our P.E. teacher of smothering victims with Sloppy Joes in the auditorium, this game contributed little to our futures.

A startup called MakeGamesWithUs is elevating this type of adolescent undertaking by teaching high school and college kids how to build iPhone games.

MakeGamesWithUs graduated from the YCombinator Winter 2012 and just launched its first social game in the AppStore. On the website, students take project-based tutorials that focus on hands-on, practical experience, rather than theory. Once they feel confident in their iPhone game development skills, they can begin building original games.

Students can engage with the MakesGamesWithUs community during the development process to get help, give/receive feedback, nurture ideas, and troubleshoot problems. As it nears completion, the MakeGamesWithUs team will incorporate professional art and music, help with debugging, and assist in adding trickier features. When the game is ready, MakeGamesWithUs will publish and promote the games for a share of the revenue.

To date, the startup has published seven games on the App Store. It just launched its first social game, Name That Jam!, where groups of friends challenge each other to name songs, earning more points the faster they guess. The game was built by a brother and sister team, still in high school, using MakeGamesWithUs’ Turn Based Multiplayer software development kit (SDK). This new tool makes it easy for aspiring developers to build social games, even without back-end knowledge.

“We founded the company to solve a problem we had when we were students,” said founder Ashu Desai. “This type of practical education is lacking from the traditional education system. Having built and shipped a product at an early age can really impact your outlook on life. We hope to inspire people to invest their time in both computer science as well as entreprenuership.”

MakeGamesWithUs has an educational as well as a publishing component. This distinguishes it from competitors like GameSalad and Chillingo, which support design/development and publishing (respectively), but not both. In some ways, it is like an incubator program for young iOS developers, providing the resources, support, and platform needed for success and taking a cut off the hits.

Instead of working on their tan or earning extra cash as a lifeguard, a group of 40 students spent their summer plugging away in the founders’ Palo Alto living room. The fruits of these labors will bloom over the couple of months, as MakeGamesWithUs plans to release 15 new games created during the internship program.

With all the laments echoing around the technology community about the shortage of engineering talent, this company is grooming kids early for careers as gaming moguls. Camp counseling is so 1990s anyway.

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

Mobile app platform Parse is adding Windows 8 to its selection of Software Developer Kits (SDK). This move is contemporaneous with the Windows 8 event happening today in New York, where Microsoft is launching its new operating system and the Surface tablet.

Parse makes it easier for developers to build fully featured mobile apps. The startup takes care of the technical, backend, server-side of mobile development so its clients can focus on other areas, like user experience and design. Now, WinRT will join iOS, Android, and JavaScript in the Parse library of frameworks. Developers will be able to write apps for Windows phones or Surface tablets more quickly and easily than before.

“This is important because Windows 8 is Microsoft’s next big operating system that will not only power most desktop PCs in the future but, more importantly, will likely compete well with Android and iOS for tablet and phone market share,” said cofounder Ilya Sukhar. “If you take a look at Microsoft’s Surface tablet, it’s pretty clear that they’re going to put a lot of resources behind this platform in the mobile world.”

The Surface marks Microsoft’s foray deeper into the realm of mobile computing. The move will potentially expand Microsoft’s limited marketshare in mobile, which made the inclusion of a Windows 8 option seem worthwhile. 

“For Parse as a company, this lets us reach the huge ecosystem of Microsoft-focused developers that we weren’t targeting prior,” Sukhar said. “Not only is that pool tremendously large, but it’s typically more focused on the enterprise than folks writing apps for iOS or Android. We’re reaching a whole new set of developers and potential enterprise customers.”

This Y Combinator startup is growing quickly. Its platform powers 40,000 apps that reach tens of millions of devices. Clients include Home Depot, Food Network, Discovery Communications, Armani, Cadillac, Green Bay Packers, America’s Cup. Parse participated in Y Combinator in 2011 and has raised $7 million in venture capital. It is based in San Francisco.

---

Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

---

In what the company is describing as the biggest overhaul yet, Facebook today released a new SDK for Android designed to help app makers on the platform get their Facebook-enhanced applications in front of more of the social network’s 1 billion members.

“With this update, our SDK provides advanced functionality that makes it easier to build more immersive social experiences, as well as better distribute and promote your app,” Facebook engineer Michael Marucheck wrote Thursday in a blog post.

The updated Android SDK, currently in beta, comes with more native user interface controls such as new friend picker (pictured) and login designs, tools that streamline the user authentication process, improved support for the Facebook API, and means to measure clicks and installs for the mobile app install ads released publicly yesterday.

In addition to the SDK release, the social network gifted its Android developers with a beefed-up developer center. The center includes tutorials, reference documentation, sample code, and additional tools for building social applications.

Photo credit: gp sachs [à Montréal]/Flickr

---

Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

---

Tomorrow, the Paris-based company that built MasterCard’s PayPass SDK and counts McDonald’s and Reebok among its mobile commerce clients will release the Airtag Kit, a full collection of everything developers need to start building mobile payment apps.

MasterCard’s PayPass technology already enables swipeless credit card use: tap the card on the reader and go. Now the credit card giant, with the help of Airtag, is extending the same technology to NFC-enabled phones.

“The Airtag kit is the second part of our partnership with MasterCard, and contains all of the hardware and software needed to build and test PayPass apps, including resources for the developer community,” Airtag chief executive Jérémie Leroyer, who has moved to the company’s New York offices, told me this morning.

The hardware in the Airtag Kit includes a Samsung Galaxy S III, a USB contactless card reader which simulates an NFC point-of-sale terminal, five SIM cards (UICCs) that include EMV chips similar to those in secure PIN-enabled credit cards, and two demo sales tags to simulate NFC-enabled merchandise. In addition, tutorials, manuals, and forums are available to help developers get started.

Source: Airtag

The Airtag mobile payments developer kit

The kit retails for $4,550, which includes one year of access to the developer program. The developer program alone is $3,250, which suggests the hardware is valued at around $1,300.

With the kit, a developer will be able to create apps for mobile payments incorporating NFC technologies, such as the capability to order online and pick-up in-store without having to use a credit card, or simply payment at point of sale. But at those prices, not every startup will be able to afford one — certainly not on Y Combinator-type money.

Whenever NFC comes up, the inevitable question also arises: What about the iPhone?

“It’s very difficult to guess what is going to be in a new version of the iPhone,” Leroyer said, accurately. “But we didn’t expect NFC in the iPhone 5 … usually what Apple does is let others go into the market, see what they’re doing, and then bring out a version of the technology a year later.”

However, Airtag likes what Apple is doing with Passbook — especially the geofencing — and uses it in the Go McDo product the company built for McDonald’s. NFC does enable better security, Leroyer told me, and the company does expect Apple to add NFC capability in iPhone’s next major iteration.

And he welcomes Apple’s entry into the market:

“NFC is very powerful, but very complex. We need players like Apple to simplify the ecosystem, and simply NFC development. That’s where we want to go, and we share this ambition with MasterCard.”

Some, including Seth Priebatsch, founder of SCVNGR and mobile payments company LevelUp, might say be careful what you wish for.

photo credit: 401(K) 2012 via photopin cc

While the world might be wetting itself over news of the brand spanking new iPhone 5, Microsoft has just opened signups for its Windows Phone 8 SDK preview.

Microsoft is releasing a full version of the SDK later this year when Windows Phone 8 devices officially hit retail markets. But for now, the company said it wants to give developers of its most popular apps a chance to check out. That means that the number of signups at this time is limited.

In a blog post, the company does offer an explanation for why its limiting signups of the preview SDK:

“I know that many of you want to know why we simply don’t publically release the full SDK now. The reason is that not all Windows Phone 8 features have been announced, and our SDK includes comprehensive emulators that allow developers to test apps against a wide range of Windows Phone features. We recognize that this is a different approach to delivering tools than we’ve taken in the past. Our goal is to generate as much Windows Phone 8 excitement as possible to attract new customers when phones go on sale. This is one of many steps we’re taking to help give you what you (and we) want most.”

Microsoft is accepting signups for the SDK preview until Sept. 17.

Via The Verge

---

Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

---

The rekindled relationship between Facebook and Apple will soon bring a deeply integrated Facebook experience to Apple iOS devices that will mean big things for the social network, consumers, and Apple’s developer community. We had an inkling that that would be the case; now we know for sure.

Wednesday, Facebook released a new beta version of its software developer kit (SDK) for iOS, which enables developers to integrate their apps with the social network. The new version will bring the benefits of Facebook’s native integration with iOS 6 to third-party application developers.

“The new features make the SDK a natural extension of Apple’s iOS environment,” Facebook engineer Jason Clark said in a blog post. “After iOS 6 launches to users, the SDK will automatically use the native Facebook Login in iOS 6 when available.”

As Clark noted, the new release, SDK 3.0 beta for iOS, will allow app developers to seamlessly grab a device owner’s native Facebook login information to create a simple, no-fuss sign-up, login, or return experience, powered by Facebook, for their apps.

Here’s what it means for consumers: When you fire up an application running the new SDK, you’ll be able to sign in through Facebook with a tap — without needing to recall and manually input your username and password. The small tweak has profound implications as it should prevent user attrition, help applications more easily attract new users, and bring Facebook more app activity yoked to its social network.

SDK 3.0 beta for iOS also introduces better user session management, pre-built user interface elements to help developers with common tasks such as displaying an app user’s Facebook photo, and better support for Facebook APIs.

Photo credit: fiduz/Flickr

Jasbir Patel, a director at Walgreens Photo, said that almost a third of photos taken today are snapped on a smartphone, not a dedicated camera.

Already, photo apps such as GroupShot, Kicksend, and StillShot have partnered with the company and integrated printing to Walgreens into their apps. In addition, Walgreens is aiming for massive scale by partnering with Aviary, a software library or set of components that enable developers to very quickly and easily integrate photo functionality into their apps.

Aviary is currently in use by about 1,200 apps with eight million users … and as TechCrunch revealed today, Walgreens participated in the company’s recent $6 million round of investment.

This announcement helps Walgreens’ photo printing business remain relevant in an Instagram age in which no-one is taking rolls of film to their neighborhood drug store for developing.

But the real story here is that what we think of as traditional businesses are no longer traditional businesses.

Brick-and-mortar enterprises need APIs just as much as Google and Amazon need APIs. In an era when the government has APIs and your neighborhood drug store has APIs, it’s getting hard to imagine a business with any scale whatsoever that couldn’t use one or more APIs.

“An API shows a business is mature and successful … it’s become a platform,” Yossi Mlynsky, founder and chief executive of Alt Tab Mobile told VentureBeat. “Walgreens should release an API for prescription drugs next.”

It’s part of the digitization of everything. Grocery stores need APIs. Businesses of all kinds — stores such as Walgreens and other non-technology companies — that five years ago could never have imagined building and offering an API, may now see the utility in providing multiple APIs: for shopping cart integrations, for integrating project management for a large construction company, for photo printing of course.

With this announcement, Walgreens just became one of the leaders of the followers.

Image credit: Phillip Pessar/Flickr

If you haven’t heard the rumors about Apple’s television by now, you’ve been living under a sad, lonely rock. The company is now reportedly releasing a software developer kit (SDK) for the rumored talking box to create the real TV game changer: apps.

Apple is holding its annual world wide developer conference (WWDC) next week and is expected to announced, or at least hint at, the “iTV.” While the television itself will almost certainly not make an appearance, it looks like the operating system may. BGR‘s sources say the rumored SDK would allow software developers to create apps for a new OS made specifically for Apple’s ventures into television, including its current Apple TV.

While Apple may not have come up with the idea of an application for mobile devices, the company has helped turn mobile app developing into an industry of its own. Any Apple television would be incomplete without this touch. Like the phone, an app platform would let anyone release tools to customize the viewing experience.

It is also rumored that Apple’s television will support Siri, the voice-assistant on iPhone 4S models. This opens the door for hand-free channel surfing and potentially control over apps. Unfortunately, if this report is true, developers still won’t have access to Siri, as there is no official application programming interface available for it yet.

BGR’s sources say the SDK will probably show up in Apple TV first, but will be HDTV-ready.

via BGR; Apple iTV mockup image by Guilherme Schasiepen

---

Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

---

Buddy.com has gained popularity for its cross-platform APIs and SDKs that work on HTML5, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Facebook, and others. With the funding, the company comes out of beta testing to release a full public service.

Transmedia Capital led the round, with participation from Crestlight Venture Productions. The full blog post and press release from the company is below.

Buddy Announces $1MM Seed Round as Backend Platform Grows

SEATTLE, WA – May 30th, 2012 – The Buddy Platform (http://buddy.com), today announced the initial closing of a $1 million seed round concurrent with the full public release of its Backend as a Service (“BaaS”) platform. The investment round, led by Bay-Area seed stage venture firm Transmedia Capital and joined by micro-VC Crestlight Venture Productions, provides the company with resources to grow the footprint of the Platform and expand its’ relationships with major brands and agencies that publish apps for any operating system or connected device.

Originally launched in beta last September, with over 6,000 developers signed up and building more than 5,500 apps, Buddy has rapidly gained support from the developer community. In a nod to the native cross-platform support that Buddy offers, those developers are building apps on platforms as varied as iOS, Windows Phone, Android, SmartTV, Facebook, web and even Windows 8. In a world first, Buddy today released a .NET SDK designed specifically for Windows 8 application developers.

“We’re delighted to announce our full public release today, which brings amazing new functionality to developers of all connected platforms – mobile or device. By offering a rich, scenario-focused platform of APIs, Buddy now provides a foundation for agencies and brands to access the most high fidelity contextual analytics possible for their apps” said David McLauchlan, CEO of Buddy.

Added Jean-Christophe Cimetiere, Director of Developer & Partner Programs in Microsoft’s Windows Phone Division, “Microsoft is excited to see the Buddy Platform offer Windows Phone developers exceptional support. Buddy’s new offering will help developers build connected apps dramatically faster, and seamlessly share backend services across platforms, including Windows 8.”

In addition to closing its seed round and full public release, Buddy is also releasing new APIs powered by partner Aviary.com, which will bring the power of Aviary’s image manipulation, photo correction and special effects to developers on any platform. Buddy also provides a rich new “Developer Dashboard”, presenting “at-a-glance” insight into real-time app performance along with additional documentation and support options.

“We’re excited to bring the expanded toolset that Buddy is offering to developers of apps on any connected device,” said Jeff MacDuff, CTO and chief architect of the Buddy Platform. “With an entirely new Developer Dashboard, rich supporting documentation, and extended API support for images, gaming, push notifications and crash reporting, Buddy is leading the way in providing a full-service BaaS for high volume, large scale professional studios and app publishers.”

Developers can learn more, create an account and start developing at http://buddy.com. To celebrate the launch, Buddy is offering free access to the Platform up to 2MM API calls per month, through July 31st, 2012.

Fusion-io has been mostly known as an enterprise company helping big names like Apple and Facebook to save money on their data center costs.

But today, the company is announcing its first software development kit (SDK) to provide software developers with native access to the ioMemory flash platform. The Fusion-io team is hoping the next Mark Zuckerberg will build his or her company with Fusion-io at its foundation.

Fusion-io CEO David Flynn compared this moment to the seminal shift between programming for tape and working with a disc. On only a handful of occasions in the past 60 years have software developers been given fundamentally new programming building blocks for memory or storage devices, the company explained. Until now, developers have been limited to tuning their applications for flash as storage. The ioMemory SDK libraries unlock direct programmatic access to native flash access patterns and data organization methods.

One of the beta testers for this new SDK was CitrusLeaf, a NoSQL database.

“Direct programmatic access to the ioMemory tier presents a rare and significant leap forward for computing, and theioMemory SDK makes that integration powerfully simple for application developers,” said Citrusleaf founder and CTO Brian Bulkowski in a statement. “When you consider that Fusion-io is already well known for accelerating applications, it’s exciting that bypassing traditional protocols in favor of direct access to ioMemory would mean an even greater performance boost in Citrusleaf’s NoSQL database for mission criticalwebscale applications. Our existing real time big data customers require low latency and extraordinary throughput, and with this revolution in application acceleration, end users will start asking if applications can run native on ioMemory.”

Onstage today at DEMO, Bulkowski gave an example of Fusion-io’s tech at work: an application with 400,000 transactions per second running on a single database server, representing a huge decrease in the amount of native memory required.

The ioMemory SDK, explained Fusion-io, will feature APIs including the Key-Value Store, which will feature interfaces to reduce latency, improve memory efficiency, and reduce code complexity.

“Improving the performance of input/output (I/O) bound applications or systems could be more pronounced and cost-effective if the choice of data to hold in flash memory is done in an intelligent and application-aware way,” said Gartner analyst Carl Claunch in a statement. “Competitive advantages for software will be the main driver pushing those makers to exploit flash as a unique memory type.”

Fusion-io is one of 80 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Spring 2012 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After we make our selections, the chosen companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Appcelerator is doing more than just letting you build mobile apps with the latest version of its mobile development framework, Titanium 2.0. Now the company is also providing an easy way to implement cloud services in your mobile apps — even if you’re not building your apps with Titanium.

Appcelerator Cloud Services opens the company up to an entirely new audience, Appcelerator CTO and co-founder Nolan Wright told VentureBeat in an interview last week. It’s driven by the company’s acquisition of Cocoafish in February. The ultimate goal for the company, not surprisingly, is to build a completely new type of mobile platform — one in which Appcelerator can provide services to all devs, even if they’re not using its platform.

“As a developer, you can consume these services easily with no additional setup,” Wright said. “In one environment, you can create both the mobile and cloud aspects of your app.”

Typically for cloud services, developers have to set up, write code, and manage a cl0ud server instance on Amazon, or some other provider. While that’s easier than the days of actually managing a physical server, it’s still too complicated for smaller developers, who just want to focus on building their apps.

Appcelerator Cloud Services is the next logical step in cloud offerings, Wright says. It allows devs to plug in cloud-powered feature like user management, photo storing and sharing, check-ins and other location services, social integration, and more. Wisely, the company is offering the cloud services to developers using Objective-C, Java, HTML5, and other publishing platforms — devs who typically wouldn’t have a reason to use Titanium.

Wright tells me that the company is offering the cloud services with a freemium model, which will scale depending on how much the cloud services are accessed. He believes that the cloud platform is strong enough to power mobile apps even as they get incredibly popular. Wright points out that other companies like Stackmob offer similar cloud services, but Appcelerator is the first to start with its own app development framework.

Given just how much of a lifesaver Appcelerator Cloud Services will be to devs, I asked Wright if the company is considering opening it up to non-mobile web apps. He said that plenty of the services could easily be applicable to desktop web apps, but the company hasn’t yet made any decisions for supporting apps outside of mobile.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Appcelerator has raised around $47 million in funding from Storm Ventures, Sierra Ventures, Mayfield Fund, and others.

Cloud phone photo via Shutterstock

With the new Aviary editor comes a mobile software development kit that will offer virtual goods for purchase, including premium effects packs, original sticker packs (which includes things like holiday and season photo stickers) and branded sticker packs. Aviary partners need only enable the SDK’s in-app purchasing feature to get a cut of the profit — Aviary will take care of all the hard stuff.

“We plan to monetize through in-app purchases,” Aviary CEO Avi Muchnik said in a statement today. “In addition to creating original premium content ourselves, we are working with a number of publishers to license their content through our distributed network.”

The company will share the in-app revenue with its partners, though it hasn’t yet revealed how the money will be divided up. In a pilot program over the past two months, one unnamed Aviary partner has seen a “nice percentage” of premium purchases, Aviary’s head of business development Alex Taub said in an interview.

“If you’re doing thousands of photos a day, and if you can convert a small percentage [into premium purchases], it gets really interesting. It could be an interesting business model,” Taub said.

The updated editor, which will work across web and mobile, also sports a slicker interface and new tools, like better one-touch auto enhance effects, and new dials for adjusting things like brightness and saturation on mobile devices. Pic Stitch, an app that lets you easily put together multiple photos, will be the first to sport Aviary’s new editor.

Aviary launched its mobile photo editor back in September as a way to help developers easily implement high-quality photo capabilities into their apps. It was a smart way for the company to tap into the mobile photo craze without actually competing directly against top photo apps like Instagram.

The plan seems to be working out for Aviary. The company says it’s now editing over 10 million photos a month, and it’s growing 50 percent monthly in terms of unique users and edits. It now has over 300 partners using its editor across the web and mobile.

Taub tells me the company is now hiring more mobile developers than web developers, a sign that mobile is becoming the company’s main focus. “Mobile is obviously the future,” Taub said, though he confirmed the web product won’t be going anywhere.

New York City-based Aviary has raised $11 million so far from Spark Capital and Bezos Expeditions.

You can check out a video of the new editor in action below.

Microsoft is embracing the DIY future with a special version of the Kinect hardware and firmware made just for Windows.

That means it will soon be even easier for tinkerers to create PC-based programs that turn them into giant blob-men or give them enormous virtual breasts. Or, on the less silly side, developers could more easily use Kinect to give robots 3-D vision using Windows-based development tools instead of janky code downloaded from god knows where.

The new Kinect hardware for Windows will have relatively minor modifications. It will have a shorter USB cable and a special USB adapter, to ensure better compatibility with standard USB hardware. And its firmware will include a special “Near Mode” to allow the Kinect sensors to work at closer distances, as little as 50cm with good fidelity or 40cm with some degradation. That means Kinect will work better for people who are sitting close to it, in front of computer monitors, rather than across the room, as it was originally designed to be used.

Kinect is Microsoft’s unusually hackable 3-D scanner/sensor, originally made for the Xbox 360. Its sophisticated combination of visual and infrared cameras make it a powerful device for sensing the size and shape of a room, the posture and movements of humans within it, and for detecting and recognizing voice commands as well as gestures. Shortly after its launch in November, 2010, hackers quickly discovered that it was fairly easy to hack the Kinect, which has a standard USB interface, reverse-engineering it to make it work with non-Xbox hardware. After an initial period of knee-jerk disapproval, Microsoft decided to embrace the Kinect-enabled future, going so far as to release a software development kit for Kinect programmers, in June, 2011. Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has even touted the potential for Kinect programming, saying the platform will be increasingly open to developers.

Image credit: Matthew Miller/Flickr

Related articles

• Microsoft and TechStars launch Kinect startup accelerator (venturebeat.com)
• Ballmer: Kinect platform will highlight new era of innovation, openness (venturebeat.com)
• How Microsoft designed Kinect to withstand gamers and lightning strikes (venturebeat.com)

---

Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

---

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

In a bid to make augmented reality more than just a buzzword, AR company Total Immersion will make its D’Fusion Studio software free for developers, it said today. The move should remove a significant barrier to entry towards creating augmented reality apps.

Augmented reality (AR) refers to a view of real-world environments that’s overlayed with digital information. As a proof of concept, the company is launching SkinVaders today, a free iOS game built with D’Fusion Studio that uses your face as its game terrain.  The game involves keeping your face free of alien invaders by tapping on them and popping their eggs. (See trailer below.) Gross? Maybe — but it’s the sort of thing kids will love, and it shows the potential of what other developers can accomplish with AR.

Total Immersion has been working on augmented reality for over 12 years — long before the topic was hip. In an interview yesterday, co-founder and CEO Bruno Uzzan regaled me with tales of how hard it was to evangelize AR a decade ago. At that point, setting up an AR demonstration took an hour, several computers, and lots of cabling. Now, many of us are walking around with AR-capable smartphones in our pockets.

Thanks to the emergence of powerful mobile hardware — in particular, fast mobile processors, high-quality cameras, and improving wireless network speeds — Uzzan believes augmented reality’s time has finally come. While there are plenty of AR-like apps out there, like Google Goggles and Layar’s apps, Total Immersion is one of the few offering “true AR” with its platform, according to Forrester. Total Immersion’s platform lets you superimpose 3D objects on top of real-world views, which gives it a leg-up on some of the lighter AR experiences out there.

The company will make the latest version of its software, D’Fusion Studio 3.2, freely available for developers to use. It supports multiple platforms, including iOS, Android, web, and even Microsoft’s Kinect. But while the software is free, Uzzan tells me the company will work out licensing deals with any developers who choose to use its technology in their apps.

Up until now, Total Immersion has been using its AR expertise to power marketing campaigns for big brands like Paramount Pictures, Hallmark, and Nike. The company decided to offer its software for free after several requests from interested developers.

Even though it’s releasing SkinVaders, Uzzan tells me that Total Immersion isn’t planning to become a game studio anytime soon. SkinVaders took about three months to develop, and another month to test, before it was ready for release. If the game ends up taking off though, the company may change its plans.

Total Immersion has offices in LA, Hong Kong, London, and more. It has received around $13 million in funding so far and has around 90 employees. Uzzan tells me that it has made a good business out of AR so far, so it hasn’t needed to request too much funding. The company also unveiled a new product at the 2007 DEMO conference, where it earned a coveted DEMO God award.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Online media editing suite Aviary is taking its first step onto mobile devices today with the launch of its mobile SDK, which lets developers embed photo editing capabilities into any iPhone or Android app.

The move is a smart one for Aviary. Instead of competing directly with other mobile photo editing apps, like Adobe’s Photoshop Express, the company will be able to take advantage of the increasing popularity of mobile photos by letting third-party developers use its tools.

“My vision is for Aviary to become the creative electricity that powers the world’s web and mobile apps,” Aviary CEO Avi Muchnick said. “I want developers to build fantastic applications that harness the significant photo experience upgrade Aviary offers. Instead of just relying on an inferior mobile camera, they can rest easy in knowing that all photos taken in their application look amazing and reflect on the quality of their overall application itself.”

Once implemented, the mobile editor is accessible in apps by hitting an “Edit” button whenever you take a picture. The editor includes basic tools, like cropping, red-eye removal, and a useful “auto-enhance” feature, as well as fun features like drawing, stickers, speech bubbles, and photo effects. I suspect we’ll see plenty of memes arising thanks to Aviary’s mobile SDK.

Unlike its cloud-based desktop editors, Aviary’s mobile photo editor is entirely local, so it’s not dependent on having an internet connection. And according to Aviary’s head of business development Alex Taub, it takes only 30 minutes for companies to implement the mobile photo editor in their apps.

The SDK is currently available for the iPhone and Android, and it’s free to use. Taub tells me that the company is hoping to launch an iPad SDK by the end of the month. Aviary is also working to port its Effects API, as well as introduce a slew of new effects, to the mobile SDK.

The company is launching the mobile SDK today with 31 partners, including PicPlz, Pixable and Fotobabble. It includes customization capabilities, so developers can change the colors of the editor to match their apps and can use their own buttons for editing tools if they wish.

New York City-based Aviary recently hired Paul Murphy, formerly Chief of Staff at Microsoft, as its new VP of business development. The company has raised $11 million so far from Spark Capital and Bezos Expeditions.

The company released a preview version of a new Google TV plug-in for the Android Software Developer Kit (SDK) Monday — meaning Android apps will eventually be available on your TV.

More specifically, the announcement means developers can begin optimizing their applications for the Google TV platform. Those apps will only become available when Google TV is updated with the Android 3.1 update.

“Depending on the design and use case, an existing Android app may work well on Google TV as is, or it may require fixes,” wrote Google TV Product Manager Ambarish Kenghe in the official announcement. “With the add-on you can test your apps to determine if they would be a good fit for TV and whether any tweaks are required.”

The company is publishing user interface guidelines to help developers with topics such as optimizing their apps for d-pad navigation and resenting information for 10-foot viewing. The guidelines also include information on how certain UI elements on Google TV differ from other Android devices.

The company first confirmed that Google TV will gain access to apps in the Android Market at Google’s I/O developers conference in May 2011.

---

Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

---

That means Microsoft is opening up the Kinect, originally designed to be used with its Xbox 360 game console, to be used for third-party applications with other devices like PCs. Microsoft announced that it would release the SDK (software development kit) for non-commercial use earlier this year at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nev. The SDK is available for download now at Microsoft’s research website.

“We are very excited to announce that the Kinect for Windows SDK beta is now available for download,” said Microsoft Research’s Anoop Gupta. “This is the official non-commercial SDK for Windows and Kinect.”

Developers get access to the depth sensor, the microphone array, and just about every other piece of Kinect’s technology. Microsoft is also providing access to skeletal tracking, which means developers can create apps that have gestures like hand swiping and dancing. The development license is for non-commercial use only — meaning developers can’t make any money off their Kinect apps yet. A commercial license to develop apps for the Kinect should come out sometime later this year.

“Although it is our intent to release a commercial SDK, we aren’t making any announcements on that today,” Gupta said.

The Kinect is a camera that tracks body movements and sits right under the television. It’s connected to Microsoft’s XBox 360 and used for games and to navigate the console’s media center. While it isn’t 100 percent accurate, the device worked well enough to become one of the best-selling devices of all time. Hackers have already had their way with the Kinect, creating applications ranging from games to slick multi-touch interfaces that feel like they came out of a movie.

Microsoft has already made several moves into other spaces with the Kinect — such as moving into Cisco’s turf with a home video conferencing service. The company has said it isn’t going to leave the device as a simple video game controller. And the Kinect has helped bring Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division up to speed with the rest of its operations —  that division alone brought in about $3.7 billion in revenue.

But so far some of the most interesting applications have been underground and unofficial. Now it looks like Microsoft is taking a page out from Google’s playbook by appealing directly to the development community. Android has become popular among developers because it is a more open environment and supports almost any idea that developers want to pitch.

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

That means Microsoft is opening up the Kinect, originally designed to be used with its Xbox 360 game console, to be used for third-party applications with other devices like PCs. Microsoft will release the SDK (software development kit) for non-commercial use this spring, and a commercial license will come out later.

Up until now, game publishers were able to make titles for Kinect on the Xbox 360. But the new SDK means that amateurs can also join the motion-sensing party and use the Kinect sensor on other machines.

The Kinect is a camera that tracks body movements and sits right under the television. It’s connected to Microsoft’s XBox 360 and used for games and to navigate the console’s media center. While it isn’t 100 percent accurate, the device worked well enough to become one of the best-selling devices of all time. Hackers have already had their way with the Kinect, creating applications ranging from games to slick multi-touch interfaces that feel like they came out of a movie.

Microsoft has already made several moves into other spaces with the Kinect — such as making a movie into Cisco’s turf with a home video conferencing service. The company has said it isn’t going to leave the device as a simple video game controller. And the Kinect has helped bring Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division up to speed with the rest of its operations —  that division alone brought in about $3.7 billion in revenue.

But so far some of the most interesting applications have been underground and unofficial. Now it looks like Microsoft is taking a page out from Google’s handbook by appealing directly to the development community. Android has become popular among developers because it is a more open environment and supports almost any idea that developers want to pitch.

Microsoft’s chief executive Steve Ballmer said the device would eventually be compatible with PCs at the Consumer Electronics Show this year, but at the time didn’t give any details about when.

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

According to a trusted source, Nokia is now likely to use Windows Phone 7 as an additional platform for its phones. Also, Nokia’s board has given new ex-Microsoft CEO Stephen Elop the green light to change the company’s strategy if needed, a source familiar with these matters said. This new mandate includes decisions on OS strategy or alliances.

Prior rumours of either Nokia dropping Symbian or adopting the competing Android platform have been unfounded. It’s only now that such strategic options are becoming viable to a Nokia CEO.

Nokia embracing Windows Phone 7 would be a key win for Microsoft and would make it the third major platform behind Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android at a time when there’s a major OS landgrab going on. In recent months Microsoft has faced serious setbacks attracting device makers to the new platform, with only HTC, Samsung and LG unofficially confirmed as launch partners (update: Asus and Dell, too). Long-time ally HP has shifted its strategy to its own platform, and Sony-Ericsson has gone all Android for 2011 .

Nokia is counting on Elop’s software expertise and willingness to shake up businesses as it tries to revive its fortunes in the mobile-phone market. Since the launch of Apple’s iPhone in June 2007, Nokia’s share price has fallen by almost two-thirds, decreasing the company value by around $65 billion. At last week’s Nokia World, Elop reiterated that, like his former Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer, his credo of choice is “developers, developers, developers” and he intends to instill this credo into Nokia.

Elop’s hiring is part of a new US focus for Nokia. Four months ago Nokia’s Board had hired a new Silicon Valley-based CTO in Rich Green, a former software boss at Sun. At last week’s Nokia trade show in London there were various rumours of a possible Nokia and Microsoft merger. According to our sources, Green is currently leading a due diligence effort to evaluate Nokia’s various software assets, but no actual merger talks have happened. The results of this diligence and the conclusions made by Elop will be key to Nokia’s future.

In the first interview in his new Nokia role, Elop told the Financial Times that innovation in the mobile industry had shifted to the US, where the group has struggled to compete. “That’s a shift from years before when the development of the mobile industry tended to start in Asia and move through Europe and then to North America. Now there’s fresh innovation in North America and it’s critically important for Nokia to be participating in that market.”

Nokia just announced a family of new-generation Symbian phones last week, including its new flagship device, the N8. Pre-orders for the N8 are the strongest the company has ever seen. Niklas Savander, EVP for marketing, predicted at the event that the company will ship more than 50 million new Symbian^3 phones.

Sources are  also telling us that at the CTIA trade show in two weeks Nokia and AT&T will announce that the US carrier will sell the N8 in the US.  This would be a major win for Nokia’s Symbian operating system and for Nokia, the world’s biggest mobile gadget maker, which, for various reasons, has failed to gain traction in the US in recent years. Nokia, amongst other hanset makers, has had a hard time attracting developers to build apps for its phones because Symbian has been a bit of a bear to use.

Amongst the key question Elop will have to evaluate is the role of Symbian going forward. Since 2008, key to Nokia’s strategy was to transform Symbian into a modern-day OS and make cross-platform development software Qt the main tool for its developers.

Three months ago Nokia launched its Nokia Qt software development kit (SDK) for Symbian. With the Qt mobile SDK, Nokia promises that developers will use 70% less code and develop apps in 50% of the time it would take them on native Symbian C++. According to Thiago Macieira, Nokia Senior Product Manager for Qt, there are 250,000 developers already using Qt. Now the company’s challenge is to convince developers to give the Nokia SDK a chance.

Leading mobile market analysis firm Visionmobile recently made an extensive study of the current state of “mobile developer economics”. Across most important categories, developing in native Symbian fared last in developer’s assessments. For example, it takes developers on average 15 months to master native Symbian C++.

With that 50%, Symbian’s attractiveness to developers goes from dead-last to middle of the pack.

At the Nokia Developer Summit 2010 last week I discussed Qt with various developers. Particularly there was a session led by Michael Samarin from development company Futurice who described the challenges with current Qt cross-platform development. Samarin’s response to Qt was overwhelmingly positive, as was the response of the developers in the room, and the challenges he described, overall, were trivial. Developer sentiment was that Nokia’s equivalent to Apple’s App Store, the Ovi app store, seems to be much improved and that operator billing is proving to have great effect on app monetization.

Developers will quickly find an installed base for Symbian apps developed with Qt. The new Symbian^3 phones, including Nokia’s new flagship N8 phone, will support Qt, and so will 20 of the current top-selling Symbian devices. While even Symbian fanboys are not ready to compare the N8 to the iPhone or the cutting edge Android phones, both the N8 and the E7 are solid devices. Still, much better Symbian phone reviews will likely not happen until a much needed Qt UI renewal in Symbian^4 phones takes place at some point in 2011. (In the Visionmobile study, around 50 out of 100 Symbian, BlackBerry and Windows Phone perplatform respondents were annoyed with the difficulty in creating great UIs.)

The question is, what will Nokia’s new CEO, Stephen Elop, do to accelerate Nokia’s turnaround. With Symbian embattered but improving, Nokia still rumoured to be launching a family of MeeGo devices in Q4 2010 and now Windows Phone 7 getting into the picture, all bets are on the table.