Forum Nokia and DeviceAnywhere have partnered to speed up the development of mobile applications for Nokia handsets.

DeviceAnywhere will power the just-announced Forum Nokia Virtual Developer Lab, a remote testing service designed to reduce the time and resources required to develop, test, monitor and deploy applications and content for Nokia mobile phones. The online service supports all Nokia devices running on the Series 40 and S60 platforms.

"Traditionally, Nokia would have to send out physical phones to encourage developers to build applications for them, send premarket handsets back and forth, which is a big hassle," said Faraz Syed, cofounder/CEO of DeviceAnywhere, San Mateo, CA.

"Under the manual shipping approach, manufacturers can only cater to a small number of developers, whereas under our model developers worldwide have real-time 24/7 access to a wide range of handsets," he said.

The Nokia agreement is one of many partnerships DeviceAnywhere has formed over the last several years to run virtual developer labs.

DeviceAnywhere currently operates in the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany and Japan, and plans to expand to additional markets by the end of the year.

The company claims that its platform is compatible with all handsets and carriers in the six countries it currently operates in. Its online inventory includes handsets from 25 carriers.

DeviceAnywhere's carrier partners include Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, Alltel, Boost Mobile and recent Nokia acquisition Helio (see story), as well as Tellus and Bell Canada in Canada. Its manufacturer partners include Palm and Sony Ericsson.

"With the virtual developer lab, we make handsets available to a much larger, more diverse global development community," Mr. Syed said. "A lot more developers have built content because they have on-demand access.

"Nokia reduces overhead, and developers are happy because they're able to build applications and content more quickly," he said. "Nokia and the whole mobile market benefits, because it brings these applications to market faster and makes these mobile devices more sellable."

DeviceAnywhere's Forum Nokia VDL will replace Nokia's current homegrown solution, Nokia Remote Device Access, which only addresses S60 handsets.

"We don't see any competitors with commercially available solutions that compete with us at all," Mr. Syed said.

The goal of DeviceAnywhere's VDL service is to solve the problem of attracting developers to manufacturers and carriers' respective platforms by allowing them to test for compatibility across a wide range of handsets via their computer.

"Handsets are more sellable when they're loaded with the best applications and services," Mr. Syed said, "and to get the coolest mobile features, manufacturers and carriers have to be ahead of the game to provide the cutting-edge tools, technology and services that developers need.

"This means more content for their handsets, which makes them more attractive to consumers," he said. "This changes the scale of the game."