-:: Malaysia Mobile Tech News ::-

As you may know, Nokia’s answer to the Apple AppStore, RIM’s Blackberry AppWorld, Google Android’s Market and Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace for Mobile, was launched a couple of days back.  The launch wasn’t without drama however – some sites such as techcrunch called it a “epic fail” – with reports of non-loading webpages, incompletely loaded webpages, general slowness and lagginess in accessing the site, etc.  Nokia even had to apologise for the “teething” problems, and promised that things would get better with the addition of new infrastructure to cope with the launch attention (reminds one of Microsoft’s misadventures when it opened Windows 7 Beta to the masses a couple of months ago, which begs the question – don’t these mega corporations ever learn from one another?).

So, for the past couple of days, I too was caught up in the initial euphoria of the launch.  I visited the website only to give up because I faced the exact same problems I mentioned above.  But what’s the point of having an app store if one can’t access it on the mobile, right?  So, I think I must have spent like a couple of million screenpresses (give or take a couple of million screen presses – I think part of my screen is totally worn out now), refreshing the “Download” application on my trusty old Nokia 5800 looking for a link to download and install the mobile version of the Ovi Store.  No dice.

A couple of hours earlier, I stumbled upon an installation file which I then downloaded and installed on to the 5800, giving me, at long last, long overdue, access to the Ovi Store on my mobile.  It has been a very painful experience, I tell you.  All this simply to discover what the big deal was all about, and how Ovi Store compared to the Apple AppStore, which I use rather extensively on my Apple iPhone.  So, having browsed the store quickly, here are my initial observations:

1. you can use your Ovi account credentials to log into the Ovi Store, which makes sense since they share the same brand!
2. I wasn’t asked for my credit card details when I logged in.  I will most likely be asked when I try to download a paid app.  I have no money left to buy anything, so I skipped this adventure.
3. downloading a free app was simple enough – locate it, press the “Download” button, and off you go.  Just look for the app in the Applications folder on the 5800.
4. there was a “fail” once when I tried to see more details for an app called “FlyScreen”.  Ah, we need to get rid of all those errors, now, before going really “live” innit?
5. it would be nice to be able to sort applications by alphabetical order.  At the moment, I can’t see any way to do this.
6. it would be nice to be able to search for an application using wildcard searches.  Unfortunately, if I typed in an incomplete application name, it doesn’t work.  Not even if I append a “*” which is the universal symbol for a wildcard search, eg. if I type something like abc*, it should return me any application with a name beginning with “abc” followed by whatever alphabets/numbers.  I tried searching for “gra” and “gra*” for the application called “Gravity” – no luck.  But if the word you’re searching for appears anywhere in the name or application details, then it will show, so for example, searching for “world” should include the WorldMate application.
7. I searched for an app called Gravity, which is the “hottest” Twitter app on Symbian right about now.  It cost €10, approximately RM 49, a small fortune in RM.  But if I buy it from mobileways, the creator of Gravity, their order page here says I only have to pay RM 36.73 (obviously when you check it will be slightly different due to exchange rate fluctuations on a daily basis).  It’s still a small fortune, but at least it’s slightly smaller than buying from the Store!  If this is the kind of pricing we can expect from the Ovi Store, I’m not certain why any intelligent person would want to buy from the Store when one can buy it cheaper directly from the software publisher.  Another authorised site which sells Gravity linked from the mobileways page shows the price as being €7.95…hhhmm…duh…so, obviously a lot more needs to be done in the area of price synchronisation, if this is at all desired by both Nokia and the software publisher.
8. the pricing is in Euros.  Eh, hello, I’m in Malaysia, can I at least get pricing in RM?  Last I checked, the Euro wasn’t legal tender in Malaysia, so a pricing in RM would be nice.  I’m not sure if this is due to the app which I downloaded.  But in any event, the system should detect I’m coming from Malaysia and price the product accordingly, using the prevailing exchange rate.
9. at the moment, I can only pay by credit card, if I’m not mistaken.  It would be nice to pay using my mobile account – ie. pay for the software by paying my wireless carrier such as Maxis, Celcom, DiGi or U-Mobile.  It’s up to Nokia to negotiate with the operators on revenue sharing arrangements, etc.  But this shouldn’t be a deal killer, since the Apple AppStore doesn’t bill through carriers (at least in Malaysia).  It would be nice to be able to pay via Paypal as well.

I’ll post more impressions as I discover them.  To me, the two biggest problems are pricing synchronisation and billing.  And not to mention, making the mobile version of the Ovi Store app available to Malaysian users – we shouldn’t be expected to go through rings of fire just to get it installed!  Or maybe Malaysians aren’t expected to spend much on software due to the rampant incidence of software piracy in this country, hence the low priority given to Malaysia in the roll out?

So, while the initial implementation is OK-ish, I’d like to see some major improvements in the areas I mentioned.  And Nokia needs to get some more applications into the store – it’s the amount of applications, ringtones, wallpapers, themes, and other stuff that will make or break the store – the bigger the quantity (and corresponding quality), the higher the chances of success.  However, it is difficult to achieve what Apple has done with the AppStore, simply because Apple didn’t give software publishers a choice when it started selling the iPhone – either sell through the AppStore or via very-limited-reach third party means (meaning Cydia and the Cydia Store, if you’re familiar with the iPhone).  Nokia didn’t start off this way – every software publisher sold through their own website, or another mobile software e-marketplace, and to force “coerce” them to now come under the Ovi Store to the exclusion of every other avenue is an impossible task.  After all, what’s the compelling reason for them to move over to the Ovi Store?

Download the Ovi Store app for the Nokia 5800 here, here or here.  Check out some screen captures below that I took of the store (click the thumbnails for a larger picture).  The last picture is of the application I installed called the Fodors travel guide.

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