Based in Finland, not a million miles from Nokia itself, Offscreen Technologies has produced both original and commissioned Symbian apps (often free) for over three years now. If, like me, you're a little curious about Offscreen's background, then note that the Nokia Conversations site currently has an interview with Offscreen's CEO, some quotes below, timed to celebrate the company reaching the cherished 100 million downloads club. Congratulations!

From the Nokia Conversations article:

If you’ve carried around a Nokia phone over the last few years, the chances are that an app or game from Offscreen Technologies has been part of your toolkit.

Well known for their polished and sublimely useful apps such as Grid Touch and Converter Touch, Offscreen are the latest developer to reach the milestone of 100 million downloads from the Nokia Store.

We caught up with Offscreen’s CEO, Harri Myllynen, to find out how they did it.

First of all, who is Offscreen?

Offscreen is based in Helsinki, Finland, and was founded by the core team in 2005, when we saw great opportunities in developing software for the early Nokia smartphones at the time.

We’re still a pretty small company, employing 20 people, most of whom are programmers.

While we make money from our apps, our main line of business has been developing bespoke apps for clients.  Our success in Nokia store has proven to be a great way to promote our company and market our skills to potential clients.

We’ve noticed that Offscreen apps have a very distinctive look. What are the ingredients of this?

We believe in simplicity, polish and common non-textual widgets.

By simplicity, I mean reducing the number of menus and screens to an absolute minimum, preferably to just one. Polish comes out through professional design and putting real life materials and elements into our apps. Non-textual widgets in turn are common symbols used for similar tasks (info, close box etc.) which minimize the need for localization.

And what would you say were the golden rules for up-and-coming developers?

To be successful in the apps space, you should always aim to be the first with a given concept in any ecosystem.

Novelty, in turn, gets noticed by the bloggers who spread the word and drive downloads – much more efficiently than any paid marketing would do.

Good stuff. I'm a regular user of Converter Touch and Egg Timer Touch, to name but two, plus you may remember the hundreds of public domain ebooks which were converted for free download by Offscreen, last year?

Just a few of Offscreen's apps, which you may recognise:

Timer Pro Touch, Level Touch and Angle Meter Touch

Labyrinth Touch, Sherlock Homes Diary, Bright Light Touch

Electric Beams Touch, Crayons Touch, Backgammon Touch

You can browse the complete Offscreen catalogue here in the Nokia Store.