Robin Wauters of Techcrunch writes:
At the Mobile Word Congress in Barcelona, Nokia has unveiled its initiative to try and repeat the runaway succes of Apple’s App Store with its own mobile storefront dubbed Ovi Store. This was an expected move…
…because we can’t expect Nokia to innovate, only copy. Developers of the apps will retain 70% of revenues (which might be enough to help people put up with developing on Symbian S40 and S60
The Ovi Store does include this feature:
Ovi Store is unique in its ability to target content based on where you are, when you’re there, why you are where you are and who else has downloaded similar content.
Nokia estimates that this will reach 300 million users by 2012 which essentially means that we’ll be inundated with tat because everyone around us will be downloading it. Depending on where you live it’s going to be classical music or something tremendously chavtastic. It’s a bit like the Welcome to the Social feature of the Zune. I frankly don’t care what my neighbours are downloading, I want to know what’s good and I feel this feature will not build upon the wisdom of crowds but mob stupidity. I won’t even go into the privacy concerns of an online store front having your location and using that information to inform your neighbours what to buy.
Of course this will be a success. The model has already been proved (though whether the UI sucks will be another thing)
> because we can’t expect Nokia to innovate, only copy.
Not to stand up for Nokia, but this was pretty uneducated. What’s the innovation in an online app store? Nothing. And we had those for ages. Yes, even before apple did it. Because I guess you were comparing Nokia to apple. Not as if they did that much innivation with the iphone. They created a great UI and added incredibly good marketing.
Nokia _is_ conservative and a follower with a lot of things, but what you say is far from truth. And again, particularly about the on-device app stores, there is nothing innovative in there.
> Symbian S40 and S60
There is no such thing as ‘Symbian S40’. S40 is not a Symbian based platform, it’s based on the Nokia OS, the ‘old thing’ that you find in most low-end and some mid range phones. j2me can be used, and is the only option, to develop for this platform so there is nothing special to put up with. S60 is the name of the Nokia Symbian variant soon to be open sourced. And this one is the painful one 😉
I think you’re making my point for me. Yes, there have been in-app stores for mobiles before but they sucked the big one. And Nokia phone have been able to buy apps before. So why is the Ovi Store big enough news to launch at MWC? Because it’s the only thing they have until the N97 gets into major distribution (after the complete ‘chien’ that was the N96).
You underestimate the effort required to make a great UI and incredibly good marketing. But it’s not the marketing that made the iPhone a success. It’s the whole shebang – this is a stereotypical thing. People think that Apple products are all about a slick GUI and ace marketing. Apple is a systems company – they’ve proven time and time again that they make systems – they make it all from the packaging to the software because they believe that the experience (of using a computer) should be better.
Thanks for the clarification on the Symbian OSen. I’ve had an S40 device. It was a dog 🙂 Buying software for it was a pain. And it was a pain to use. This is more than a slick GUI – it was the difference between taking a painful experience that puts people off buying software for their mobile and replaces it with an App Store that is breaking records. Nothing innovative there?
They did the same with the iPod and iTunes. How many times do they have to display a runaway success before people will stop pointing at a slick UI and slick marketing?
I agree that Apple is a systems company delivering end-2-end ecosystem on its own and doing a good job on that.
I just wonder how creative solutions it provides for phone owners if the number of choices is limited to just the one device.
I also have concerns over apples lack of biodegradable material usage in their product.
And to top it off I find that while its very nice that apple is selling some phones, its hardly serving the market of 1 billion people buying a new phone each year.
Very US centered and only for rich kids in the rest of the world, who wouldnt buy the iphone if everybody had one. The hype is wearing off and the economy is not helping.
So nice business model, but limited upward potential for application developer revenue if you ask me. It’s a numbers game.
If anything the US is getting but a taste of what is yet to come, and already happening in Asia and Europe when it comes to 3G mobile internet services. Hope the people wake up now and smell the opportunity 😉
Hi Dale
It pains me to say this, but you’re ill informed and wrong.
Do creative people really care about the device as long as it’s not fugly, seems well made and services it’s function? Do they need one in pink? One in green? One in a handy mini-case? No.
Do you really have concerns over the lack of biodegradable materials or are you just spouting the Greenpeace line which has been debated here and elsewhere as just Greenpeace selling their credibility for a headline grab?
Yes, there’s a billion people buying phones every year – the difference being that phones that just do text and telephone calls will die out. Internet phones will become the norm. Third generation phones like iPhone, G1 and Pre wouldn’t exist if not for the popularisation of the iPhone.
And yes it’s a numbers game. You can continue to develop for the billions of ‘dumbphones’ out there and make fuck all money, or you can develop for a phone with 20+ million compatible handsets out there – held in the hands of people who actually buy applications. It’s definitely a numbers game.
Get on the clue train because it’s leaving the station.
I don’t really understand how I’m making your point. I said that on-device app stores have been ‘innovated’ quite a long ago. Even BREW devices had it well before apple (http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2008/11/the-mobile-application-store-phenomenon/).
> Because it’s the only thing they have until
I’ve checked and they have quite a few phones announced. But anyway, what do you expect? What do the others have? The mobile revolution/evolution is plateauing, we can’t expect too much surprises hardware wise anymore. The mobile phone has eaten the camera, the PDA and the GPS and gained interner access during the last 8-10 years. The input and output will evolve during the following years to come, but most of the functionality is already inside. Which is not surprise because these devices are internet enabled mini-computers which means that their functionality can be extended in software.
BTW a week ago I saw a presentation on a 3D display project for mobiles (an EU research project) where one of the partners was nokia and one of the others is a hungarian firm developing 3D displays (http://www.holografika.com).
> You underestimate the effort required to make a great UI
> and incredibly good marketing.
No, I’m not underestimating. I just said that this is not innovation. It’s careful and talented engineering, it’s very important, but it’s not innovation. Its importance, along with good marketing ;), is show how many people think that iphone is innovative. While it functionally doesn’t do anything that most smart phones didn’t do 5-6 years ago. And it’s more restricted than those, meaning that you can’t really create software for it that is based on even a tiny bit of innovative ideas. You can replicate software used on desktops.
> because they believe that the experience (of
> using a computer) should be better.
Sure, experience should be better. And great part of it is the UI, and for sure not the itunes store that I can’t even open on my linux box.
> I’ve had an S40 device. It was a dog 🙂
S40 is the low end OS. I thought it would be dropped, but I was quite surprised to see on a 5300 ‘xpress music’ about a year ago how it was polished up and how UI concepts were taken there from symbian. (E.g. the ‘idle screen’.)
> Buying software for it was a pain. And it
It’s a quite restricted platform. On the other hand anyone can/could build a nice software store for symbian. It’s probably not easy, because phones have very restricted input facilities (yes, even the iphone), so I think that for these kind of tasks the best solution is to control the phone from the desktop/browser. E.g. I pair my phone with my app store account somehow once and then I can just click what software I want to install (or remove!). That’s how it works on the iphone too, I guess.
> more than a slick GUI – it was the difference between taking
> a painful experience that puts people off
No, this isn’t more than the UI. This _is_ the UI and it shows how important it is. The UI is the technical side and what you say is the effect of not having a good enough one.
> pointing at a slick UI and slick marketing?
But it is :). It’s just that important a factor, but still it is. It may be more important _for financial success_ than packing a lot of features, but I wasn’t talking about the success, I was talking about the technology and innovation.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on some points.
I don’t care that the S40 is the low end OS, I was using a relatively high featured phone with videoconferencing support and 3G and all the rest of that good stuff. And the whole experience sucked.
And it’s not as if the mobile companies didn’t have excellent handhelds they could have ripped off before. They just neglected to.
There’s a difference between what you consider to be innovative and what I do. I value talented engineering and design to do things in new ways, doing things that will be copied by others rather than doing the copying.