The handset maker is starting to collaborate seriously with Silicon Valley's stars.

This year is the first time Henri Moissinac, head of Facebook's mobile division, has attended Nokia World in an official capacity. Moissinac, a young-looking, slightly geeky Frenchman, says he can vaguely remember attending the annual Nokia junket in the distant past--when he was an intern at network operator Orange--but his feet have remained firmly planted in Facebook's headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., ever since.

It's a testament to the fact that for the past few years, Facebook's mobile growth has been more synonymous with Research In Motion's ( RIMM - news - people ) BlackBerry or Apple's ( AAPL - news - people ) iPhone than with Nokia's ( NOK - news - people ) handsets. The first Facebook mobile application appeared on the BlackBerry, while the first handset to bring Facebook "Connect" to mobile applications--allowing program developers to incorporate Facebook connectivity into their apps--was the iPhone.

But now Nokia is eagerly expanding its network of friends too. Moissinac came to Nokia World in Stuttgart this year to announce several fresh ventures with Finnish handset maker Nokia, which has only recently started to open up to America's tech darlings. On the list: a Facebook application that allows users to update their location with their status, or "lifecast," as well as a version of Facebook "Connect" for mobile apps that run on the Symbian platform, Nokia's own operating system.

The Facebook logo is also pretty visible on Nokia's latest handsets, including the flashy new X6 phone, Nokia's first product to use the iPhone's capacitive touch-screen technology. Facebook Mobile is front-loaded on the X6 home screen, an important step considering Nokia's own investments over the past two years in its Ovi-branded services for sharing information, media and contact details among friends.

Why did all this take so long? Nokia's frequent late-comer status is just a "coincidence," but developers including Electronic Arts ( ERTS - news - people ) asked Facebook to make the iPhone a priority when it came to applications.

The iPhone's uniform operating system and limited device range have actually excited developers more than Nokia's far wider 38% mobile handset market share. Even though Nokia has the volume, its Symbian platform and S60 user interface are not as versatile as other systems, while its huge range of handsets can become a monstrous task for developers to manage.

"Nokia's challenge with products is not just doing the right thing," says Fogg. "It's that they have to be seen to be doing the right thing." The N900 and collaborations with partners like Facebook may at least be steps in the right direction, if not the end of the journey.