Richard Kerris was Vice President of Worldwide Developer Relations for the webOS division at HP for less than 9 months before he decided to leave on October 24th. Here we are, just 4 days later, and Marco Aregenti, Senior Vice President of Developer and Marketplace at Nokia, just tweeted: “Great people are what makes the difference, always. I’m excited to welcome Richard Kerris in my team as Global Head of Developer Relations.” Considering HP let go of over 500 Palm people in September, we think Richard made the right choice to get off a sinking ship, but what exactly is he going to do at Nokia that Microsoft isn’t already doing with their developer evangelists? We dug up some information on this guy, and he’s had quite a career. He used to work at Apple as their Senior Director of Developer Technologies and Worldwide Developer Relations, so you know he’s good if Jobs liked the guy. He was also the Chief Technology Officer for Lucasfilm, which means when he opens his mouth he knows what the hell he’s talking about.
Earlier today we wrote about Nokia’s joint campaign with Microsoft to give away 85,000 Windows Phones, with 25,000 of those going to people who make applications. Richard’s probably got a few people in mind, people who have made world class apps, who will get some of those said devices. It’s not enough that Electronic Arts brings their titles to Windows Phone, it’s the little companies who are well known in their respective community that make all the difference. This writer’s Finnish bank for example has an iPhone app, but not an app for the other smartphone platforms. How do you convince a company like that to take notice of Windows Phone?
Anyway, it’s going to be exciting to watch how Windows Phone develops. We can’t wait to see Apollo, the third generation of the operating system, which Nokia will likely customize far more than what they’ve currently done with Mango.