The market isn't on Ovi... What should Nokia do about it?...

2. If you’re serious — and I mean properly serious — about the Ovi Store, set aside $30m. Rent one warehouse in London, one in New York, one in San Francisco and one in Paris.

Each warehouse will hold 100 developers. Open to anyone. You just have to prove you’re talented and you’ve got a good idea for developing for Nokia.

Each developer is paid £3,500 per month on contract to cover their basic costs. They invoice the warehouse and take care of their own tax. In order to secure their place, they join on a 30-day trial. During this trial they need to develop one free application and submit it to the Ovi Store. The application must meet a reasonable criteria set by the warehouse council. i.e. it’s got to add value, some how. After submitting the first app, developers then adopt a 2 month rolling contract — with the provision being they have to create a new (paid of unpaid) application every two months.

Ewan's plan, with some back of a fag packet costings, justifications and illustrations of how poor he believes the Ovi Store is, can be found on MIR 3.0.

• Symbian Foundation - one year / six months / three months on...
      
  
• Symbian Exchange and Exposition
   
  
• The universal web runtime as a meta platform and Symbian's potential role
  
  
• Challenges of open governance in the mobile industry
   
  
• Qt and the Symbian Foundation
    
  
• Symbian's competitiveness with other mobile platforms in various areas
   
  
• The forthcoming application arena (has been touted as Symbian's 'app store', but this is a misleading label), with a brief mention of Symbian Signed changes
   
  
• What handset does an Executive Director use?

Firmware updates become available for different device variants (e.g. operator branded handsets) and markets at different times. I've successfully checked for and installed the update with a EURO1 variant. As neither the E71 nor the E66 support UDP (user data preservation) you will need to back up your device before installing the firmware update.

Update details

Mail for Exchange version 2.09 and Nokia Messaging 5.1 are included in the firmware. This Mail for Exchange version can also be downloaded from the Nokia website, however this version does not support sub-folders (which is only available for Mail for Exchange on some S60 3.2 devices - currently Nokia E75, E55, N86, and 6710). Nokia Messaging can also be downloaded from the Nokia website.

The email set up wizard has been improved and there's additional help for users in deciding what type of email they should be setting up:

The E71 now includes Internet Radio and a number of widget-powered shortcuts to popular social media and social networking websites:

The standard My Nokia application has been added to the E71 (in the help folder).

There also seem to have been some general performance improvements, most notably when opening the Installation folder.

Its likely that there have also been a significant number of bug fixes and stability improvements.

Please do share anything else you may notice in the comments thread.

Thankfully, Ricky Cadden has extracted the two SIS files that S60 5th and 3rd Edition FP2 device owners need, so head here to download these if you haven't got easy access to a Windows PC etc.

Read on

RSS options for The Phones Show: Standard QVGA version:   / High res VGA version:  

Ovi Store isn't included, which is a surprise (though it is in Download!, of course). Neither is Ovi Chat, which again I'd expected, this having made it into v30 firmware on the N79. Initial impressions are that v30 firmware is faster and leaner, perhaps not surprisingly. So we're talking bug fixes and optimisations. Maybe 9 months too late, but hey... at least those who bought the N96 and have been regretting it can feel a little better about their phone now.

The usual caveats apply, in terms of backing up (though the User Data Preservation worked fine here) and in terms of network-branded devices having to wait a while before this firmware gets 'approved' by their network.

Now that Nokia seem to be cranking out firmware updates at a regular pace, I'd like to see them get a v31 out too, with more of the Ovi integration we've seen on the N96's sister devices.

Fixes in this release

• Reduced memory footprint
• History is presented in the proper order.
• Cookies in the UK data center are handled more reliably.
• Sharing links via SMS are handled more reliably.
• Reconnect correctly loads the last page in history plus we’ve improved reliability.
• Site specific issues have been resolved for Rooftopcommedy.com and thefind.com.
• Zoom buttons behave properly and disappear after a couple of seconds.
• Default browser setting works more consistently.
• Text entry on Symbian has been improved with one caveat below.

Known issues in this release

• Multi-line text entry on Symbian: Skyfire might exit the text entry mode when the user is choosing a word from the predictive text list. Plus, using the down key might NOT get you out of text entry mode. If this happens, use enter or center OK. 
• Superbar state on Symbian: Under some circumstances, exiting the Superbar via the ‘cancel’ option will navigate to the previous page. 
• Change connection on Symbian: Choosing the search WLAN option might not change the WLAN connection.
• Samsung Jack (AT&T): Because of a security policy on this device, it will not allow uninstall of Skyfire if there is not a SIM card in the phone. Simply insert a SIM card.

"Nokia Messaging now offers a desktop-like IM experience on your Nokia device.  You can stay in contact with your friends across multiple communities, easily switch between and save conversations and login invisibly. 

• Chat with your friends on the Yahoo!® Messenger and Ovi communities
• Quickly navigate through multiple conversations across different communities
• Background notifications of new IMs for true multitasking on your phone
• Familiar and integrated community experience -Yahoo-specific emoticons, graphics, and sounds
• Rapidly set status and availability, and login invisibly - choose who you want to talk to
• See your Ovi friends' avatars and set your own
• Save conversations to remember your chat sessions 

This beta is available for the E75 device only, and works with Yahoo!® Messenger and Ovi accounts."

In this podcast we cover:

• Truphone expands support for Nokia phones.
      
  
• Nokia 5800 is Europe's top selling contract handset
   
  
• Nokia and Intel strategic tie up for Open Source / HSPA modem technology
  
  
• HTC Hero launch event, discussion of HTC Sense
   
• Google Adsense for mobile applications, leading to a general discussion on developers and Ovi Store.
   
  
• High-tech closing theme tune