All About Symbian - Symbian, Nokia and S60 unwrapped.
Once Upon A Time, There Was A Store Called Ovi
Published by Ewan Spence at 10:33 UTC, July 20th 2009
With announcements from many platforms on new developer studios being commissioned, success stories for independent coders, and huge download numbers being related in the media on what seems a daily basis, where is Nokia? Why is the Ovi Store not getting written about? Because unless the Ovi Story is told, developers are not going to want to take part in a software warehouse that appears to be a ghost town. Read on for my take...
Simple business rules. When you spend money, you expect to get more than you spend back. The difference is profit and you want to have as many projects on your books that have this mysterious 'profit' thing as possible. Conversely you want to have as few projects as possible where the expenditure is greater than the income. That's not profit, that's loss.
I wanted to remind people of the fundamentals, because when you boil down announcements, projects, long term plans and even individual releases of games or hardware, it comes down to “follow the money.” So the announcement from games publishers Electronic Arts (EA) that they are establishing the mobile games studio 8lb Gorilla to create titles for the smartphone market should be of interest to all. Especially as it is focussed on just one platform. The iPhone.
For all the opportunities that Nokia can offer, from the eco-system of the N-Gage to the many tens of millions of addressable phones that can be addressed by the Ovi Store, EA have decided that they can make more money with iPhone apps rather than S60 apps.
Now I know that, logically, just because they are making a studio for A (the iPhone) that doesn't imply that B (S60) is a loss maker, but if you 'follow the money' then it's a fair conclusion that A can earn more money than B. Given that EA have a number of software titles in all the relevant markets (the iPhone App Store, the N-Gage catalogue and the Ovi Store), I can assume that they have hard data to base their judgement on.
And it appears that they've found Nokia wanting.
It is not enough to provide the tools in some “build an app store and they will come” mode, Nokia need to be both actively courting developers and indie publishers, but also seen to be doing this by the media and by the public at large. While dedicated smartphone watchers despair of all the “I just wrote this in my bedroom and now I'm earning a regular income” 'success' stories around small iPhone developers, it does keep that eco-system in view of the public, and drip-drip-drips the idea that there is money there to follow, irrespective of the true nature of the long tail in the app stores.
If building it is not enough, then you need to get interest going by other ways. Sony are taking this approach with their digital store for the PSP. While it was first launched with a physical game card (the UMD), it's been surrounded by the air of piracy (unlike the Nintendo DS, which probably has even more piracy thanks to the ease of access to the device software, but it's just not talked about). Sony have the Playstation network and are slowly (re)working game releases to an all digital format, and as part of that have been dropping the price of the SDK and toolkits, reducing the time required for apps to go through quality assurance and dropping a commitment to pre-confirm concepts of games.
Sony has kept a very tight hold of their eco-system in the past but are starting to let go now and both open up the system, tell people about it, and, according to reports, this has seen 50 indie developers sign up for the PSP, including some of the big names from (you guessed it) the Apple platform, as well as pushing for more applications that aren't just games.
This is what Nokia has to be doing. And because they're going to be playing from the back foot (ha - a cricket reference! - very topical! - Ed), and appearing to catch up with the rest of the platforms (and note that it's not just smartphone platforms now), the Finns will have to play faster, harder and stronger than everyone else just to get to parity. This is not an area that Nokia, or Symbian, or even Psion, were ever any good at (someone please come up with a few counter examples – we're struggling to think of any here at All About Symbian).
Nokia have built a nice big electronic warehouse in the Ovi Store. It's not perfect, and I'm sure that an American reality TV show could rip it down and build something better, but as with classic British Sci-fi and special effects, with good fantasy novels of faraway places, it's not about the construction and the bells and whistles. It's about the story.
And I don't see Nokia telling a compelling story about mobile applications that makes developers want to listen to.
-- Ewan Spence, July 2009.
News Discussion
Agree 100%. Rather than encourage small developers to the Ovi Store, they are actively discouraging us, by making it so difficult/expensive to add content. You will be aware that RMR Software have been distributing Psion/Symbian programs through lots of outlets/stores on the Web for over 15 years (Handango, SymbianGear....). And yet I don't have my S60 programs available on Ovi Store. Maybe Nokia should ask themselves why?
1. HAve I ever looked in the OVI store? Yes
2. Have I ever downloaded something from the OVI store? Yes
3. Have you ever downloaded a paid for item from the OVI store? No, they were all free.
4. Are any of the items that you downloaded from the OVI store still on your phone? No.
5. If the OVI store was effortless to use and all downloads were free or very low cost, do you think you would have used more of its content? No.
6. If there were a greater choice of high quality apps available on the Ovi store would you be more likely to be using those apps? Probably not.
7. What apps are you interested in? A good mail client, and ampping app. Already got the maps and Profimail.
8. Do you still visit the OVI stroe regularly? No, never.
Basically, I was curious to try it out and now I realise there it is of little use then I'm not interested anymore. Interestingly my iPhone using colleague has an almost identical story about his app store use. Except every now and then a little buzz goes round about some cool app, and he goes and tries it. There is no buzz about any Ovi apps.
Ovi sounds great on paper but in practice it's being sadly let down by inadequate infrastructure. I, like many others, have purchased stuff from Ovi only for the download to fail or there be a fault in the store leading to a 'connection error' being displayed onscreen.
With Apple's app store you get a proper receipt with an online database of your purchases that you can easily raise a query/error with. That way you get a speedy response to any problems with downloads. With Ovi you get a receipt, but if you attempt to raise a query with a failed download you get a stony wall of silence. If you go to the official Nokia discussion pages you will actually find kind hearted Nokia employees who are taking details of posters problems and using internal systems to actually fix the problem liekly in their own time. It's as if they are embarassed by the lack of a more visible and responsive 'customer support' desk in the store.
I had to reformat my 5800 recently and I've decided to not download the Ovi store app as it is an extra I can do without. I'd rather go to vendors and purchase direct from them where there is a more robust and visible backup system i.e. email with a better hope of a response.
The other problem I find with Ovi is the lack of modern looking apps. A lot look like really old grainy games you got on the SNES or Sega Master System. Although retro is good every now and then, today's smartphone owner would like a bit more polish from their apps. Maybe this is because developing apps for these devices is deemed a niche or not profitable enough so not enough is invested? Maybe it's a difficult platform to make apps for? (i'm not a developer so I can't properly comment) Perhaps Nokia needs to have a better front of house for their developer suites?
Ovi has potential...if you think about it everything at the outset has potential. The chance of success for anything depends on the quality of tools and infrastucture given to people in order to make things happen and work well.
But then everything changed. My phone crashed. The crash was not software related or had anything to do with what I did. I know that, because the Nokia service partner I visited told me that my phone crashed due to a manufactoring problem with my 5800.
3 weeks later, I got my beloved phone back and went straight to the Ovi Store to redownload my expensive apps, only to realize that I had to rebuy all of my previous purchases. Obviously I was pissed. I had spent way over 50 euros on stuff I would never get back.
It's that kind of behaviour that drives people away from the Ovi Store and in my case all of my friends too!
Very interesting, taking a cue from your questionnaire
1. Was I waiting for Ovi Store in great anticipation? Yes
2. Was I sad and angry when ovi store app was available only for touch and 3rd edition was left out? Yes, very much
3. Did I download the app on my N79? Yes, the moment it was available.
4. Did I buy anything from there? No
5. Why didn't I buy anything from there? Because I didn't know what to look for.
6. Is the app still occupying precious space on my card? Hell, no!
7. Has ovi frustrated you enough to ditch Nokia as a phone? Hell, no!
8. Do you miss Ovi store on your phone? No
the basic problem is, Nokia or rather Ovi store doesn;t know how to hype, what to hype in the store. I was clueless when I first logged in. I have lot of 3rd party apps. Handy Taskman, JoikuSpot Premium, IM+, Skyequickey, Gravity, opera, you tube, google maps, wavesecure, handy weather, quickoffice 6, qik.
What do you see in featured, probably apart from Gravity, all are crap, trailors of movies??? What??? I need apps to make my phone more peppy, efficient, I couldn;t find them there.
Ovi files became free, why wasn't it featured?
It did not work for me. Plain and simple. Don;t know about others...
On my N86 it takes over 40 seconds of displaying the Ovi logo before it starts to do anything. On my N95 8GB its even worse. I've not tried downloading anything from it for the simple reason that it is far too slow and clunky to use.
I wouldn't mind one bit if the actual act of making a purchase took a bit of time to do security and authentication etc, but for browsing the actual content there is no excuse for such a poorly executed application. All the app needs to do when it starts up is say "I'm a device of type X, give me a content list", then display it. How it manages to perform so badly is a complete mystery to me.
Give it time for goodness sake! :-)
I agree there are major problems to fix, not least the rather poor store search engine which does its best to hide whatever you're looking for, but that's what a soft launch is all about, to identify all the bugs while the number of users is still relatively small. It's effectively a public beta.
If the problems are still there in one year's time then that's a big worry, but to only be one month into a soft launch... that's no time at all.
If you don't like Ovi Store in its current form vote with your wallet and don't use it. Refusing to buy something is the best way of telling a company what you think of their product. Unlike certain other manufacturers I could mention, Nokia doesn't force you to use their own store, so they are giving you the option of voting with your wallet.
But to say Ovi Store will NEVER be a success just because of problems in its first few weeks... that's just silly.
And what the heck is the rush? Why do people think stuff has to happen NOW NOW NOW or else never happen at all? I'd rather they learn lessons from this soft launch now and get the product done right BEFORE they start advertising it to all and sundry.
OVI store is more like widget store. Using OVI store via PC or phone is just killing your freetime lol.
That's why I have commented critically AAS arcticles (way too many) about OVI.
OVI that, OVI this and OVI everywhere.
How about us? We are users and customers...
The huge advantage the iPhone's app store has just now is that it's all under one roof so the casual user can just select what they want. Interestingly though, having checked what was on my iPhone owning friends' phones this weekend it's pretty much the same dozen or so apps or their near equivalents as are on my 5800.
I guess the truth is that there really aren't that many apps that people use continuously.
However, I had a problem with this:
"DS piracy is not talked about". Excuse me?
DS piracy has received massive publicity.
R4 DS carts have been publicly available in Japan for several months, and could be bought in most video game shops! They were made illegal just recently. You can even buy them in vending machines!
DS flash carts have been covered in the West as well, for example in every large gaming media, including Edge magazine, or blogs such as Joystiq or Kotaku.
Above all, I have been browsing it about once a week so far.
The issues I have with the Ovi Store right now is that it seems like a "me too" response to the popularity of Apple's AppStore and one that has not been executed completely.
Re-downloading is certainly one gap that Nokia has not addressed adequately, it is not even covered by their FAQ.
I am currently waiting on resolution on one such issue where I need to re-download an app that I bought last week.
Nokia never really did anything to make up for the relative lack of applications on S60V3, never did anything to make it easier to get an application tested and signed.
Did nobody at Nokia think to check out the competition? It costs 99 dollars to have an application tested and listed with the Apple store. For S60 it costs hundreds just for the signing, potentially thousands for the testing (and retesting), and that's for just one version. If you want to ship a touch and non-touch application, be prepared to double those costs.
Nokia should have fixed that before launching the store. Now that the store has launched with all of the stupid restrictions of the past, developers have looked and shrugged their shoulders and moved on. And honestly... who cam blame them?
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Originally Posted by davekolmer
My two cents worth as an American: the name "Ovi" is completely meaningless and enigmatic. I love Nokia products and prefer them to the phones typically foisted upon the public by US carriers, but if I asked 100 people here in the USA what the "Ovi Store" is, I can almost guarantee NO ONE would know or even be able to guess. The beauty of Apple products is their simplicity and intuitiveness for the masses. I could ask the same 100 Americans what the "App Store" is and probably all 100 would know and be able to describe it. I don't like the iPhone for it's specs, but its user interface is simply brilliant. Maybe the word "Ovi" means something elsewhere, but it is not self-evident. They should have stuck with "Download!" or something similar.
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Originally Posted by JohnnyN
The Gravity Application should be downloadable from the official website and you need to enter your IMEI number to get another download. If you've changed your phone though, you DO have to buy another copy.
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And the thing with the phone change could easily be solved by enhancing the "Switch" application already in place by Nokia for that exact purpose (which is phone switching)!
PLEASE PEOPLE AT NOKIA READ THIS POST AND ESPECIALLY JOHNNYNs!!!!
then i had to hard reset my 5800 (corrupted web feed issue) and i had problems reinstalling roadsync.
i contacted dataviz and ovi store support. the former saying that they'll look into it and will give me a link to download the app in a week's time and the latter just called me up asking for purchase details and will contact me with further develoments.
both suggested "repurchase" to download the application again to which i answered a resounding "no way".
so now i'm waiting for the issue to be resolved.
i don't see the problem in having a repository of purchased apps to be downloaded since ur purchased is tied to ur imei anyways. cracked applications will always be around so they shouldn't make things difficult for people who actually buy applications.
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