Ovi Store – The potential it stubbornly refuses to be

When talking about Ovi Store, it’s not difficult to find opinions about it that are less than flattering. Yet, at the same time, Nokia is bragging what a great success it is. In Nokia Conversations it boldly claimed that 2010 was the year of Ovi Store! So, what is it then? The greatest mobile app store on the planet or the worst thing humankind ever invented after the car air freshener?

Most probably the correct answer is neither. Yes, Ovi Store does have a great potential. It’s hard to deny that fact. The constantly increasing download rates clearly show the demand for an app store for Nokia devices is there. Yet, at the same time, it seems that many end users and developers are not that enthusiastic about Ovi Store. Some of them, to the utter disbelief of Nokia, don’t even have any enthusiasm about it at all!

What could be the reason for these kinds of heretic views? To be honest, this site's storage space would run out if trying to list them all. However, let me mention a few things that I have personally found a bit annoying and sometimes even frustrating. Yes, these are my opinions and you may feel otherwise, but I do not hold the copyrights for these as quite a few seem to have similar opinions about it too.

Let us start with the “end user experience” (I believe that is the fashionable way to say it, but I’m not so sure what it means). While I admit that the new Ovi Store app that came with Symbian ^3 is much better than the old one, it’s still not great. Then again, it’s much better than the Maemo version found in Nokia N900, which is nothing else than a web site shortcut. While Nokia N900 has a really great web browser, it’s not the same thing as having a real app for Ovi Store. I sincerely hope that the MeeGo version will be much better and by the time the MeeGo device is out. Not just un update about half a year later like the case was with Maemo and Nokia N900. Also, by the time MeeGo is finally out, the Ovi Store app should be done in Qt and not WRT or something.

Coming back to the Symbian version of Ovi Store, what could be more frustrating for the end user than to receive an “installation error” without any further explanation after trying to download and install the just purchased app? Yet, this still happens far too often. The worst part is, that no one else, expect the end user, seems to get any info about it. At least the developer doesn’t get it, as my recent experiences have shown. If Nokia receives some information about any errors the “end users experience” (oh, now I know what it means!), I don’t know, but if they do, there doesn’t seem to be anyone who cares over there.

In Ovi Store, it is up to the end user to try to find a solution for the errors (yes, errors as in plural, since there are many: installation error, download error, AND payment error) he might receive. But that shouldn’t be that hard, right? All he has to do is to click that support website for the app or write an email to the developer. So what is the big deal here?

Well, while the support website and email are a requirement to be able to publish an app in Ovi Store, which is more than reasonable, this information is kept strictly confidential and is not published, especially to the end user and this has nothing in common with reasonableness. What the end user should do, apparently, is to contact Nokia support, which is not always that easy as one has to click several links before finding the support form. But on the plus side, they seem to answer fairly promptly. However, usually they just send you a text message to be able to download it again and if that fails, they’ll just offer a refund. This is not great for someone who wanted this specific app. It is even worse for the developer of the app who, by the way, never receives any information about the issue and therefore cannot help in solving it.

But how does Ovi Store perform in general? Obviously things are much better when they work as they are supposed to work and, to be honest, this is most of the time. The fact is that there are some great apps in Ovi Store to be found. Unfortunately it is this finding that might be a rather annoying problem, especially for the developers. While browsing through Ovi Store, one cannot help but notice that it is overflowing with “apps” that are nothing else but RSS feed readers. And these so called apps don’t have a separate category, but are more or less evenly distributed in all categories in huge numbers drowning all real apps that have some actual code written in it. Not surprisingly the developers, who are trying hard to make quality apps, are not too happy about this situation. But this is quite short sighted from Nokia too, since while the number of apps can be easily inflated by these simple blog apps, the end users will surely feel disappointed of the general quality of the apps and this, in turn, will bring bad publicity to Ovi Store.

When it comes to the developers they, unfortunately, have even more reasons to be less than jolly about Ovi Store and everything to do about it (there is a nice wish list for Ovi Store in Forum Nokia Discussion board). For example, the time from submitting the app to Ovi Store QA to the actual publishing in Ovi Store has risen from about a week to several weeks. Also the publisher support response time has gone up accordingly. Of course, this is only temporary as so many new publishers have started submitting apps and hopefully this situation will be corrected soon. However, it does give a glimpse on what is wrong in Ovi Store. On one had Nokia is trying it’s best to get new developers on board, which is good. But at the same time, it didn’t seem to cross anyone’s mind that this might bring new developers on board who, surprisingly, could develop new apps which, amazingly, they perhaps would want to publish in Ovi Store resulting, and this is the truly unbelievable thing, for the need of more workers in the QA team! Yes, I admit it. No one could have possibly foreseen that!

Then there is the thing with Qt framework, which is going to be the sole framework for Symbian and MeeGo devices. This is all good since, in my opinion, it is a great framework. I really like Qt. Nokia, for some time now, has been encouraging the developers to use Qt and that is good. Unfortunately, publishing Qt app in Ovi Store is not that great. In fact, one is basically penalised for doing this.

First of all, the developer has to insert this warning in the description field of the app: “This item may require a one-time download of components as large as 13 MB.” Since the description field is limited to 500 characters, this limits the amount of information the developer can write in it. Incidentally, all those countless blog apps do not need to have any kind of warning that the app needs constant data connection in order to work, which would be rather expensive when roaming.

Then there is the “issue” in Symbian^3 devices not being able to locate Qt content on Ovi Store, which I find rather amusing considering that Nokia’s whole might is behind Qt framework. Anyway, the current workaround is that a non Qt duplication of the app is made. Unfortunately this means that instead of one Qt app for Symbian, there will be two. This obviously affects the download rankings and the reviews, since they are considered as separate apps. Also a simple thing as having a link to the Symbian app becomes a bit annoying, since one must have two: one for Symbian^1 (S60) and one for Symbian^3. Undoubtedly this issue with Symbian^3 and Qt will be fixed soon in some future firmware update. Of course, Nokia, keeping with its traditions, will conveniently by that time “forget” all the nice reviews which the Symbian^3 duplicate received.

Another rather entertaining thing I noticed about this Ovi Store business recently was when Ovi staff tried to move my Maemo app (Currency Converter) written in Qt but submitted as Maemo (since, at the time, that was the only way to submit it) to “Qt Based Application”. I suddenly got an email that my Qt Based Application was submitted to QA, which I found rather strange as I could not remember doing anything recently. When I went to have a look, I found this new submission with a helpful “Do Not Delete” prefix before the name. So I correctly concluded that they where moving the Maemo stuff, which made sense. This way I could, in theory, have one single content item (in my case Currency Converter) for both Maemo and Symbian (and MeeGo in the future). However, suddenly this process was halted and I got an email explaining that this was done because the end users who had already bought the app would not be able to re-download it. Now, while the reason for this seems quite noble indeed, one is left a bit confused after realising that apparently Nokia doesn’t seem to have any employee who is acquainted with databases and therefore would be able to write a quick script to add those who have purchased the Maemo app to the “new” Qt Based Application.

To conclude, Ovi Store has many issues. Some of them are just annoying, while others are plain hilarious. If one is into black humour, that is. Yet, at the same time, it does have a lot of potential (which because of the limited time available for me to write this and other issues mainly to do with entertainment factors, I failed to mention). There are still humongous amount of Nokia devices around the world and therefore a lot of potential customers. Hopefully one day all this potential will be used to the benefit of both the developer, who will be encouraged to wire more quality apps, and the end users, who will have more quality apps to choose from. In the mean time, if you are end user, keep searching. Ovi Store does have some great apps and they can be found even though Nokia is doing its best to hide them. And if you are a developer who is hoping to get rich by selling your mobile apps, move on, Ovi Store is not for you. Perhaps in the future, when Nokia is finally able to fix many of the issues with Ovis store, you might be able to earn just enough to afford and nice portion of ice cream every few weeks. If you are fortunate, that is.