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Ovi Store in the US Not Launching With Carrier Billing
Published by Ewan Spence at 12:24 UTC, April 29th 2009
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
News Discussion
The SIM card is basically a credit card: it identifies you, lets you pay for stuff, and then sends you a monthly bill for all your purchases along with a service charge and interest on late payments.
Phone networks who want to be more than just "dumb pipes" ought to be jumping at the chance of becoming the main payment method for online software and other products. They could totally replace Paypal and even make inroads into the developing world where phones are far more common than PCs or bank cards.
It's not just about software either: here in Finland you can buy real physical objects with phone bill payments, for example you can buy can of coke from a vending machine by dialling the number on the machine's casing, and many home shopping services and charity telethons take payment by text message in a similar manner. Imagine how much money the phone networks could make if that kind of payment method became routine, it would be such a vast sum that they could probably afford to give actual phone calls away for free as a sweetener.
Phone networks are being given a huge opportunity here to reinvent themselves in a way that will outlast any threats from VOIP etc. If they want to survive they would do well to take this opportunity before someone else takes their place.
Yours sincerely, Happy 5800XM owner.
Daft as usual Nokia, just daft. No excuses, especially as zong.com is free to use, and yet is used by both big corps and 1-man co's alike.
| No excuses, especially as zong.com is free to use |
The carriers then take another 25% to 45% according to Zong, so the total billing system share could end up at 55% of the purchase price. That might make it psychologically quite hard to sell to publishers as a payment method, because most of the money could go on the payment system.
- Credit cards are nearly ubiquitous in the USA, and if you don't have one you can use cash to get a card for phone/net shopping from the Seven Eleven.
- Operators in the USA don't want to share their customer relationship with Nokia.
- The operators have conditions that make it uneconomic, e.g. minimum revenue. (Like hiring a bar for a party, where you promise a minimum amount of business and if your guests don't spend enough you have to pay the difference at the end of the night.)
- Did (does?) the US have big problems with premium phone line fraud? That could make the operators reluctant.
- Nokia wants to increase its market share first, to put it in a better bargaining position.
I like games on my phone... I have a bunch... I can buy games like Sky Force and Tilelander online without a problem... pay by credit card, download, install to my phone and I'm ready to play!
But what if I am interested in a Gameloft game? In the US the experience goes something like this:
1) Go to Gameloft.com
2) Select your device, country and carrier. (USA, T-Mobile, Nokia N73)
3) Find a game you want to buy.
4) Click the Buy button and enter your phone number and carrier.
You will be told to "Go to the games category on your phone to buy your game today!"
5) Grab your phone
6) Go to the T-Mobile t-zones page.
7) Go to Downloads
8) Go to Games
Then you find that there are no games available for the N73.
But wait... didn't gameloft.com just show me dozens of games for a Nokia N73?
Congratulations Gameloft... you made Infinite Dreams some money. :P
I will definitely check out an Ovi Store without carrier billing. If they require carrier delivery for purchased content it will be a lot less appealing though.
(I've been hoping N-Gage would become available for the N73 so I could just buy and download on the phone, but it looks like Nokia gave up on N-Gage for the N73.)
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