Nokia's upcoming launch of the Ovi Store in the US will not, apparently, come with carrier billing – the ability to have any purchases added to your phone bill, as opposed to inputting credit card details into the system. To be fair, no other on-device store has this facility in America, so Nokia aren't being unduly penalised in not having this feature. But it does create another step in the process for the end user, and the seamless experience Nokia were planning on isn't quite in place in that territory. Read on for more.

Here's the quote reported in the Guardian:

Nokia said on Tuesday operator billing would not be available in the United States when its Ovi store opens in May - the latest in a series of setbacks in the U.S. market for the world's top cellphone maker.

Nokia said on Tuesday consumers can pay in eight countries -- Australia, Britain, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Russia, Singapore, Spain -- through telecoms operator bills for software or media bought from Nokia's Ovi store, to be opened in May.

It had earlier said purchasers from Ovi will have the option of paying through their mobile operator's bill in nine countries including the United States.

Carrier billing would have been a strong differentiator in the US market, especially for Ovi which, for all the talk of the N-Gage and MOSH, will be launching from a standing start on a limited number of handsets. Making the experience as much a 'single click' as possible for those early users who will write and blog about even the failure to come to an agreement with a network provider, is important PR as well as good design.

The money spent on applications is the lifeblood of any application store. How it leaves the pocket of the end users, how it is split between all the partners involved (handset manufacturer, store front, network carrier, and of course the publisher) is going to be one of the areas that developers will look at when deciding which platform to write for.

The discussions on carrier billing will continue, and not just in the US, but around the world. And it won't be just Nokia doing the talking to get this in place, you can bet on that.

Ewan Spence, AAS