Nokia has unveiled a new software development kit (SDK) for its Series 40 6th Edition mass-market mobile devices, giving mobile developers a range of new tools for the platform.

The Series 40 platform is designed for Nokia's high-volume feature phones. The Nokia 7510 Supernova will be the first mobile device based on the 6th Edition. It is due to ship to markets worldwide soon.

The new SDK will give mobile application developers and operators support for the Nokia WebKit open source browser, Adobe Flash Lite 3.0 and the Java-based location API for navigation and location-aware services. It also provides a host of development, testing and debugging tools to help ensure that programs are stable and efficient.

"This latest SDK helps third-party developers to build richer multimedia applications and deliver advanced mobile services to the broad base of mobile subscribers served by Nokia Series 40 high-volume devices around the world," said Tom Libretto, vice president of the Forum Nokia global developer support programme.

Nokia said that the device platform approach makes it easier for programmers to match applications and services to individual handsets by allowing them to build core functionality on top of the platform technologies, and then optimise the applications for user interfaces and technology extensions on specific devices.

The announcement will come as welcome news to anyone interested in the Nokia 6260 slide, also unveiled by the Finnish company today.

The toolkit is available for download from Forum Nokia.