Products & Services

Ovi Store launch – the reaction

By JBC on 27 May 2009

GLOBAL – “The launch is an utter disaster”. So said Robin Wauters on TechCrunch.com. In contrast, Ewan at Mobile Industry Review ended his launch report with “Good Work Nokia!”. At the risk of sounding biased, I’m going to agree with the latter. Why? Well, let’s look at the stats. 109 countries. Five languages. Fifty handsets. Operator billing in eight countries. A cross-platform service offering a wide range of content. The problem? Not anticipating the speed, volume or numerous locations of users accessing the service.

By yesterday afternoon, many of the initial teething problems were resolved and with servers serving 15 times the traffic they had been in the morning, everything was working just fine. What’s more, the server issues highlighted one key fact – Ovi Store was being accessed by far more people than anyone initially anticipated.

That’s all thanks in part to the speed with which the news spread across the Internet. AllAboutSymbian’s Rafe was one of the first to report the soft launch over the weekend, and has been updating along with colleague Steve ever since (they even rushed out an AllAboutSymbian Insight Podcast which you can listen to here). But that’s just the start with Google News showing in excess of 440 articles written about the launch. Yesterday.

We’ve been through a lot, though not all of them, and picked out some of the more interesting ones here. Along with those mentioned above, you’d do well to take a peek through some of the highlights here.

Andrew Nusca from ZDNet reckoned the launch was low-profile, though not that’d you’d realise from the coverage

“It may not be the most high-profile announcement around, but Nokia’s Ovi Store may affect millions more mobile phone users than Apple’s App Store ever will, 25,000 apps be damned.”

Patricio Robles from EConsultancy recognises the scale of the task in his report

“To be fair to Nokia, launching the Ovi Store isn’t an easy undertaking. Unlike Apple, Nokia has a portfolio of devices that it offers around the world and it serves over 50m phone owners. That means it reasonably faces a lot of challenges that Apple didn’t. There’s no way this global launch like this would be easy for any company.”

Whilst PMP Today reports on the range of handsets that can access the service

“However, the good thing about Ovi Store is that it also provides content for a variety of Nokia phones and not just the 5800 XpressMusic and other new products.”

Stuart Dredge from PocketGamer gives a quick run down on what’s on offer for gamers

“As an example, there are 187 games available for the N95 8GB, and 129 for the 5800 XpressMusic. Using the option to search for ‘Any Phone’ reveals a total of 257 games.”

Kevin Purdy from LifeHacker puts it succinctly for those who already have a Nokia

“Nokia phone owners, you’ve finally got your own place to find useful, creative, productive, useless, and just plain silly apps for your device, as the Ovi Store launches with compatibility for more than 50 phones.”

Dennis Bournique from Wap Review was generally positive about the service itself

“Although most of the initial reviews of the Ovi store have been pretty negative, I like the mobile web version. It’s well designed, easy to navigate, search works well and the download process is relatively free from roadblocks”

Whilst Michael Bettiol from BoyGeniusReport shines a light on the scale of reaction

“Throughout the night our inboxes had been lighting up like the New York skyline with reports that Nokia’s Ovi Store went live across the globe”

Marin Perez from Information Week puts the Ovi Store into context

“While the opening-day jitters are surely a disappointment for Nokia, the launch of the virtual application store puts it on equal footing with its rivals.”

And Tricia Duryee from MocoNews adds some scale

“While every app in Apple’s store works on every iPhone, Nokia’s store at launch is much more complicated. It supports more than 60 devices, comes in five languages and has support for operator billing in eight countries. If any company has the scale and dedication to deal with this potential fragmentation, perhaps it is Nokia”

Stan Schroeder at Mashable looks at what Ovi Store means for developers

“With Symbian still being the leading open mobile platform, I’m sure the Ovi Store will attract a lot of interest from both users and developers.”

Finally, the folks over at Stuff.tv leave us with this little insight into what they, and us, will be doing next

“We’re off to spend the last of this month’s pay packet now”

I have to say, some mixed reactions with a lot of negative feeling over the initial serving issues. That’s something I personally can understand. But then I think about the scale of what’s just happened and think, maybe getting it absolutely right from the get go just isn’t possible. At least not on that scale. Quite quickly we saw big improvements yesterday and I reckon that’s a sign of things to come. Yesterday didn’t spell the end of Ovi Store, as much as some doomsayers might suggest. It’s the begining. And what a start!

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6 Trackbacks For This Post

Nokia’s Ovi Store at Full Throttle : Cellphone9 - Mobile Phones - Wireless Life - Cellular Phones Says:
May 28th, 2009 at 6:53 pm

[...] intriguing was the transparency and quickness of reaction from the Nokia Conversations blog that did admit to some server hiccups. See, corporate blogs [...]

High tech » Nokia’s Ovi Store at Full Throttle Says:
May 28th, 2009 at 8:51 pm

[...] intriguing was the transparency and quickness of reaction from the Nokia Conversations blog that did admit to some server hiccups. See, corporate blogs [...]

Read about gadgets » Blog Archive » Nokia’s Ovi Store at Full Throttle Says:
May 28th, 2009 at 10:01 pm

[...] intriguing was the transparency and quickness of reaction from the Nokia Conversations blog that did admit to some server hiccups. See, corporate blogs [...]

Open Ovi: All about Ovi Services » Blog Archive » This Week on Ovi (I) Says:
May 30th, 2009 at 12:37 am

[...] and supporting 50+ devices. History lovers can have a look at the different reactions in this nice post put together by James from Nokia [...]

Mobile All-In-One Blogs » Blog Archive » Nokia’s Ovi Store at Full Throttle Says:
June 4th, 2009 at 7:03 am

[...] intriguing was the transparency and quickness of reaction from the Nokia Conversations blog that did admit to some server hiccups. See, corporate blogs [...]

Launch of The Nokia Ovi Store – The Reaction | Nokia Review Says:
June 26th, 2009 at 2:43 pm

[...] Nokia Conversations have pretty much summed up what i was about to write, so instead of me going on with my personal thoughts now, I will wait a few weeks, and let the Rollout of the Ovi Store complete, because as it is, its still Rolling out to many other Countries. Finland for example has not even got the Ovi Store mobile Application yet, and the same goes for many other Countries, North America included. Its far too early for anyone to draw their conclusions on something that is not even completed. As said, i will wait a few weeks, let Ovi Store find its feet, and let the dust settle before I write about my thoughts on the Ovi Store. Thus far, my impressions are positive, (Uk sim card used), having already purchased, and downloaded a couple of applications without any problems whatsoever. [...]

Post a comment

Bill Says:
May 27th, 2009 at 10:06 am

I agree completely. It’s a great move by Nokia, and by “soft launch” I’m guessing you mean “weren’t sure it would work so didn’t shout about it.” – if that’s the case I’m not surprised at the reaction. It wasn’t quite ready, but it worked regardless. Good work all round, as long as they’re working quikly to fix it!

Renegade Fanboy Says:
May 27th, 2009 at 10:44 am

James, 15x times traffic being? This is all well and nice (I still cannot BUY applications in Italy, though) but if Nokia is not publishing some numbers, this might be poor excuse, nothing more.

Did it break under 1000 users and serving 15.000 now? Or did it break under 10000 and serving 150.000 now? Did Ovi Store pass the 1 million download milestone already?
It’s a numbers game and without those just the fact remains: Nokia had problems on the first day.

I believe in the size of the tasks, but maybe Nokia should be communicating clearly to those, who are not fanboys.

Micky Says:
May 27th, 2009 at 10:45 am

Some might fine pointers there James, and many I totally agree with, you quite simply cannot compare Ovi Store to Apple’s App Store, completely different markets, and infrastructures.

NokiaBT Says:
May 27th, 2009 at 4:16 pm

hello , i love this ovi store and I’m french so when will it be in french ? thanks
(and when the kinetic scrolling will be integrate in s60v5 ??? )

NokiaBT Says:
May 27th, 2009 at 4:22 pm

it could be useful in the ovi store !!!

Dirk Trossen Says:
May 27th, 2009 at 8:53 pm

Sad and biased because I found a breadth of negative feedback, outlining more than just performance issues, all of which is omitted. Prices are FAR too high, often higher in the store than on developers’ sites (sometimes even free outside). The mobile interface is rather awful and sluggish (client-side) on N95. Loading new items of a page takes ages over WiFi (why not loading in the background in anticipation of hitting ‘next’ – not learned the benefits of async operations?), the selection of categories is clumsy. And why do I need to see the ‘OVI – Nokia’ logo for approximately 2 seconds before anything happens? That’s marketing at the wrong place!!

The content is low in numbers – many online forums offer more. And NO: you can’t excuse this with ’soft launch’ since the launch has been announced as ‘launch’ period.

Very disappointing indeed.

miksuh Says:
May 28th, 2009 at 5:13 am

I downloaded the Ovi Store application through the Ovi Store website using Nokia 5800 XM’s webbrowser. Everything works perfectly. I have already downloaded lots of free stuff and I also bought two applications. No problems at all.

Ovi Store application is good in general, it works fast and buying/downloading could not be easier. Well done Nokia.

miksuh Says:
May 28th, 2009 at 5:23 am

“Prices are FAR too high, often higher in the store than on developers’ sites (sometimes even free outside).”

Well I do not aggree with that.

1) Prices are defined by the author of the application, not Nokia.
2) I have noticed that claim that prices would be higher in Ovi Store is not really true. Here is some examples.

* JoikuSpot currently costs 15€ on Nokia Ovi Store. it normally costs 25€ on developers web page and now on web page there is a special offer of 15€.

* BestProfiles currently costs 10.95$ on developers web page, and 5€ on Ovi Store. So it’s cheaper on Ovi Store.

* BestBlacklist currently costs 9.95$ on developers web page, and 3€ on Ovi Store. So it’s much cheaper on Ovi Store.

Anonymous Says:
May 28th, 2009 at 11:57 am

Of all the things to complain about in the World your moaning about a 2 second boot up logo
The launch day problems will have done no damage at all b/c the people in the real world away from geek internet blogs wouldn’t even know about it yet, that’s like 99.9% of people.
The trouble with internet tech geeks is they think that there opinion is everything and b/c they dont like something they think a normal user won’t, they also think nokia should make them happy but the truth is they are unimportant, it’s the normal people who work in factory’s, call centres and hang out on street corners who are important and the ones who will make or break a service

Elsterap Says:
May 28th, 2009 at 12:13 pm

You say you can’t compare the OVI store to the Apple’s App store, but potential customers will, and they are the people that really matter.

I’m now deciding between the new Iphone and an N97 as my upgrade, shall i go with Nokia because the OVI Store is, ‘clever’ or the iphone because i can get 100x the amount of apps for one phone?

offcs Says:
May 28th, 2009 at 1:21 pm

Talk about glossing over the cracks! It is now illegal in the UK to use quotes that do not reflect the overall tone of the review for films, and it should be for you.
The store is a disaster. How can it not be compared to your leading competitor, the App Store? This is the model that you have to better. To say that the App Store had fewer apps when it opened, or that it also had server problems is the sign of poor excuses. The App Store did have both of those things (although the quality of the apps were much better than OVI’s), but you knew they did, so should have learnt from them.
I have a 5800, and really like the phone. If the apps available were up to the standard of Gravity, it would be OK. They are not and are overpriced (even Gravity, £8 on Ovi, £6.50 on mobileways).

philippines Says:
May 28th, 2009 at 1:39 pm

When I visited the ovi store, it did not show many apps and games for nokia 5800. It only displayed THREE games! I’m here in the philippines. Any help?

Linda Says:
May 29th, 2009 at 8:26 am

Is it possible t get the facility or the application installed in my phone which i got unlocked from puremobile recently!! it’s a Nokia 8800 !! Thanks

Arne Says:
May 30th, 2009 at 7:15 am

I can’t tell … I still don’t get the Ovi store app offered in Download! here in Germany on my 5800.
Why is the 5800 supported in other countries and the store is open in Germany, but I don’t get the store app???