Nokia today did a series of announcement, especially targeted towards individual developers, and with the precise aim of lowering the barriers for developing and publishing apps for Nokia devices.

The first important announcement is that, starting today, individual developers can register and publish their apps to the Ovi Store, a thing previously allowed to companies only. This is a huge step for the Ovi Store itself, as the importance of individual developers in contributing to the growth and success of application stores is absolutely primary.

The second announcement, not less important, is that Nokia started a public beta for signing Symbian apps for free. As the cost of Symbian Signed is historically one of the major targets of criticism, this step from Nokia is surely welcome and a sign of interest (maybe just a bit slow..) from Nokia towards its developers. More informations about packaging and signing are available here.

If this is not enough, Nokia just released the official release of Nokia Qt SDK, shipping with integrated support for the Smart Installer (that allows to dynamically download dependencies for your Qt apps), and allowing to publish apps for Nokia N97 mini and X6.

Absolutely well done, Nokia!

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