Nokia Pulse social aggregator in Android, iOS

February 19, 2012 | Filed under: Featured,News | Posted by: Sam Turker

Nokia’s social and location apps lead Başak Özer chose an interview late this week to tell the public that the company’s Pulse app would be reaching Android and iOS devices. Without giving a timeframe, she told the Boston Business Journal that the private social aggregator would be leaving Windows Phone soon. The company was breaking its preference for exclusive apps since it was social and needed to be on “every platform.”

The app, out on Windows Phone since the fall, taps into existing services like Facebook and Twitter to automatically let a family or close circle of friends know when something has happened, such as when a photo goes up or one of them has checked into a given location. Future work from Nokia would include a fresh social network and a larger suite, Özer said.

Like a number of Nokia’s more recent efforts, Pulse has been developed in the US, in Boston, rather than in Finland or other Euro-centric areas. The effort is part of a broader shift that acknowledges North America’s greater importance in the smartphone era and has seen phones like the Lumia 900 jointly developed across continents with the US as its primary target.

For most of the pre-Windows Nokia era, the company typically only paid lip service to the US, routinely promising a renewed commitment that usually amounted to just one or two imported European models and limited marketing or consideration for the country. Until 2012, most Nokia smartphones had to be bought in the US either through Nokia directly or through an importer, both without any contract discounts.