Spurred on by his reviews of the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro and Samsung i8910 HD, David Gilson looks at the huge investment Nokia has made into providing an Ovi service layer - it seems that, whatever Ovi's detractors might say, the absence of this service layer on non-Nokia hardware is desperately noticeable. He also wonders whatever became of Symbian's Horizon project - as good a starting point as any for getting applications out to all Symbian smartphones.

"As I recently wrote, the application store has become an integral part of the smartphone experience. Nokia have gone beyond the app store idea, by building up the Ovi service brand, available only to Nokia phones. It's fair to say Ovi has had mixed results, with Maps and Mail being the most notable successes. By doing this Nokia have provided Symbian users with a compelling user experience over and above the base platform.

Ever since its formation, Symbian has been a multi-manufacturer platform, but thus far none have created any type of ecosystem that could rival the Ovi brand. Of course, Sony Ericsson has the PlayNow web-based application store. However, the the breadth of content just isn't there yet, and they need a dedicated application (or at least widget) rather than using a totally web-based system."

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