As Nokia prepares to officially open its unified application storefront to consumers, the handset maker is stressing that Ovi Store is not about cashing in on the app store craze, it’s the culmination of Nokia’s year-long plans to solve the problem of discoverability and disparate processes across its handsets.
“The advantage of Nokia is our reach and scale, but there was no way for developers to achieve this,” said George Linardos, vice president of media services and software at Forum Nokia, at a CTIA luncheon today. “They needed a media network….We went from consolidating our activities to being part of the biggest craze of the year, which wasn’t what we signed up for.”
To differentiate what ultimately is an application store, Nokia is tying it in with its other services, like music and video. For example, a Qik app for streaming live video to the mobile Web will upload videos to both the Qik server and to Ovi Share, Nokia’s video and photos sharing platform. Apps will be distributed through Ovi, but also preloaded into certain handsets, starting with the N71.
“It is about distinguishing our services to distinguish our handsets, which will all lead to sales,” said Rob Taylor, Forum Nokia’s director.
Nokia does have a vast array of handsets on the market, each with a different user interface. Taylor said that the fragmentation that exists is there for a very specific reason – to target distinct market segments, but it will prove to be a challenge nonetheless. Nokia would like to move to enabling a ‘write once, launch everywhere’ system for its developers, but he realizes it’s not feasible yet.
Nokia has already lined up some compelling content in advance of the launch, including apps from the AP, Qik and mobile media Kinoma, as well as a deal with Tim Kring, creator and product of the popular TV show Heroes. Starting with mobile first, Heroes will launch an immersive narrative through the Ovi Store using geotagging, social networking, user-generated content and professionally made videos. Eden Zoller, principal analyst at Ovum, said that this app and others are meant to reinforce that Ovi is not just an app store – at least in Nokia’s mind.
“Ovi Store is positioned as a full-blown entertainment channel with an application store attached, which makes it different and more ambitious than most of the other app stores hitting the market,” Zoller said in a research note. “This is partly why Nokia makes such a big play of the personalization, location and social media features that underpin Ovi and which it hopes will provide differentiation, for both users and developers.”
Another one of these media features is Point & Find, which lets users point their phone at physical objects, beginning with movie posters, and pull up related information and services on the Internet. This function ties the phone’s camera, GPS and browser to the app to let users capture an image, receive location-relevant information and use search to pull in relevant services. Zoller pointed out this could be used by developers to offer more personalized apps and by advertisers for engaging with the mobile user.
Nokia plans to charge for apps in the Ovi Store with credit cards at launch, but Linardos said they recognize this has its limitations. As such, Nokia will also integrate with operator billing, giving the operator a cut of the revenues if the developer chooses to charge that way. Ovi Store is scheduled to open next month.
