When the iPhone acquired third party applications (somewhat belatedly, but...) I was very keen to see what software came through. Yes, we all know that the number of apps for iOS is now over 300,000, but it's the first six months which is most interesting to me. For the first few days, there was an understandably small trickle and then the flow of new/approved releases built up to a few dozen per day and then a hundred or so a day.
At a couple of dozen a day, an on-device application store is very manageable. At a hundred new/approved applications a day in an app store, it's just about possible to keep up with the new titles, filtering them in your mind into a couple that you must buy or download and another handful to try out sometime.
The iPhone App Store has been growing for the last year at between 500 and 1000 new applications per day - at this rate, it becomes impractical for even the seasoned industry watcher to keep up with the new releases, let alone a casual user. In other words, the 'New' list becomes a deluge and most iPhone users rely on word of mouth or blogs to find out about new and exciting apps, or else plug in search terms and see what pops up.
Nokia's Ovi Store is currently running at an average of about 40 actual apps/games per day, which strikes a sweet spot in terms of keeping up with new content. Not only can most super-keen Symbian users (like me!) keep a handle on new entries in the store, but even if you miss a day or two, it's only a matter of scrolling down a few screen-fulls to get caught up.
Note that I'm not saying that the Ovi Store is better than the iOS App Store - I'm simply pointing out that the latter has become a victim of its own success in many ways - finding content often reminds me of the proverbial needle in the haystack.
And not that finding applications in the Ovi Store is that much easier, mind you. Factors you have to fight include:
- a Search function that still misses obvious items, simply because there was a minor spelling variation - I thought most programmers could handle 'fuzzy' searches by now?
- a mass of Java games, RSS-app-wizard 'apps', Flash lite applets and other items that are rarely worth inclusion - they certainly wouldn't make a 'curated' store selection.
- a strange Nokia system that sees old application flagged up as new, just to confuse everyone. Shouldn't 'new' mean 'new'? And not just 'new' because the developer added a space to the text description to try and 'play' the Ovi system?
- the speed of the Web runtime-based Ovi Store client on most of the pre-Symbian^3 phones. Browsing the Ovi Store isn't always fast, fluid or fun
Regardless, I stand by my contention that the Nokia Ovi Store, at around 60,000 items (so an estimate of about 15,000 actual applications, of which about 50 are flagged as new each day) is currently at a nice, manageable size and, with the new v2.0 client on the new devices, reminding me quite a bit of the iPhone App Store circa early 2009. Which is a compliment.
What's next for the Ovi Store though?
- We still need better handling of application updates, since very few applications bother to go online and 'phone home' to do this themselves.
- We need the raising of download limits per Ovi Store account. I've lost track of the number of times I've bought an app, then had to re-download it because of an unrelated device problem, then downloaded it again because of switching to a new phone - and then hit Nokia's arbitrary hard limit and been forced to buy the app all over again [it's no use emailing Ovi Store's customer service people and waiting for a response, before arguing a case and hoping you'll win; it's - sadly - more efficient of my time to just buy again]. The iOS and Android and Blackberry stores allow unlimited downloads as long as you're logged in, so setting the number at 3 in Nokia's case seems downright awkward...
- As mentioned above, we need better (fuzzy) searching, better clarity over what's new and what's just updated.
- We need the option of using the Ovi Store client in a black theme - with all the latest devices having OLED screens, the current 'mainly white' theme is incredibly inefficient of power. [And, if the Nokia Social team are listening, this applies to you too!]
- We need better handling of Qt-based applications, even more so since this seems to be the way forward for Nokia's app ecosystems. Again, I've lost count of the number or Qt-based apps which have got stuck in a 'Download/Install/Error' loop - the way out is to use File manager to manually find the installer in /DOWNLOAD on mass memory or card and tap on it there - but it really, really shouldn't be necessary to know how to do this!
So - the Ovi Store's at a healthy and manageable size. If Nokia's programmers could just crack the bulk of my gripe list above then the Store would really be motoring....
Steve Litchfield, AAS, 2 Nov 2010