Slowly, but surely the real issues are starting to come out at Nokia World. And it’s really all about the software at the end of the day. Which makes one wonder – are we at the right event?
First. Nokia’s new flagship touchscreen mobile the N8, which is clearly an excellent device in terms of hardware, still won’t even ship with the Ovi Store pre-installed as a matter of course. On many version the store will have to be be downloaded and installed, according to representatives at Nokia World.
Second. On the upside, in-app purchasing and advertising will come to the Ovi store and be integrated with operator billing. That’s something iPhone and Android don’t do yet. So that will be a key advanatge for developers. The Ovi Store already allows this in up to 91 countries. So potentially developers could make significantly more money on the Ovi store than competitors, assuming people have the store on their phone in the first place and the store is good enough at helping people find apps. Yes, Nokia plans to make it more lucrative for developers by improving the Ovi store UI, tools etc. But one issue that doesn’t seem to be concerning Nokia is an equivalent to Apple’s genius function to aid discoverability.
Yes, I know all about the arguments that it’s better to have the right 50 apps than 250,000 bad ones. But that’s not going to incentivise apps developers is it?
Finally. We all appear to be at the wrong confernece. Developers may well indeed ask, where is Meego? Because although Meego must surely be the future for Nokia, scanning the agenda, you’ll find only one session on Meego at the developers Summit. There is literally no other mention.
Instead, it’s clear that the upcoming Meego conference in Dublin will turn out to be the real moment when we can glimpse Nokia’s future, assuming it has one.