Nokia opened Ovi Store, finally. And I was not disappointed at all. It was as bad a mess as I thought it would be. And I'm not talking about the capacity problems and stuff.
The logical comparison is between Apple's AppStore and Nokia's Ovi Store. Both sell applications for the users of their devices. So let's do some basic comparisons:
| Apple's AppStore | Nokia's Ovi Store |
|---|
| Annual fees |
$99 paid to Apple for the developer program |
$200 paid to TC Trustcenter for the "Publisher ID" |
| Fee per application version |
$0 | $20+ |
|---|
| Revenue share | 70% | 70% (credit card)
~40% (operator billing) |
|---|
So, I want to make a freeware application (actually I've already done one for the iPhone). With Apple I'll pay $99 for the first year. That's it. With Nokia I'll pay at least $220 for getting the application in. More than double. So, it's not a reasonable route to get freeware applications to users. Oh, and when I need to update the application, add features etc, I'll have to pay at least $20 every time. With Apple, it's free.
Ok, forget the freeware. I'd like to get some revenue from the application. Let's say I'll charge $1 for it since it's a small application and people are willing to pay that amount for it. With Apple I'll have to get 142 new purchases per year to break even. With Nokia I need 314 purchases for the first year if I don't do any updates and I only use credit card billing. If the customers are via operator billing, then I'll need at least 550 purchases to break even.
But since all applications will be updated, this is not the case. With Nokia, every time you update the application you need to sell 29 more applications. So you really have to think if the update will get you more customers or not. With Apple it's free.
Also, if you're not part of the Launchpad program, you'll have to pay $50/application to get them into the store (is this still valid?). So the purchases needed goes higher and higher.
Someone tell me why I should use Ovi Store? To get the application into millions of devices? Oh wait, the actual store application isn't available in more than a couple of countries. And only for two devices. So that's not going to be a reason for me until it's available everywhere and on every S60 3rd edition+ device.
So in my book, Nokia messed things once again. Even though they did ask a couple of Finnish companies how things should be done and the main answer was "like Apple's store." But no such luck.