OviFlash.com is a new website just launched today that aims to promote and direct traffic to Flash games and applications on the new Nokia Ovi Store deck. This is an independent website (not run by Adobe or Nokia, and takes no revenue from them or the developers featured) and is all about growing the Flash mobile market for developers, and raising awareness of what Flash content can be found on Ovi. It’s also aimed at increasing visibility for Flash developers on a mobile portal, which will become quite crowded like like other app stores – making content discoverability one of the key issues that independent developers must face.
So if you’ve had Flash games, applications or themes published on the Ovi Store, email your information to info@oviflash.com and get it linked up and featured. You can also follow along on Twitter @oviflash.
Posted 27 May 2009 — by Dale
Category Mobile
I’ve had some time to play around with the Ovi Store since it launched yesterday, and while I think Nokia have done a pretty good job overall, there’s a few quirks which make the experience less than what it could be. I also think there are some serious bugs which they are in the process of ironing out. Again, would have been nice to have this sorted before they flipped the switch, but such is life.
One issue, that is only relevant on the website, is when you are being shown content based on a particular device. Now in principle this the best idea be cause you really only want to see content that is going to be able to loaded onto the phone that you have. Problem with the Ovi site is that when you go there fresh, and not logged in with your account details, the site isn’t sure what phone you have. You can select the phone from the interactive banner on the homepage, but by default this is set as the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic device. This is a great device, but is hardly widespread in the market compared to the other devices on offer (e.g. N95 8GB, 6300), so you actually are shown less content than what you normally would (because there’s not as much touch-screen content as there is for regular keypad devices).
This is of course only relevant on the website because when using the mobile site or the mobile client, it knows what device you’re browsing on.
So if you’re on the Ovi website and you’re not seeing much content, or can’t find a piece of content that you’ve followed a link to, then head back to the homepage, and scroll through the devices (watch the content change on the homepage as you do that) until you get to the option for “Any Phone”.
There’s certainly been some “interesting” press around the launch of Nokia’s Ovi Store in the past 24 hours. Some good, some not so good. Unfortunately I think the “soft launch” Nokia were planning opened a little “harder” than expected and some early experiences of Ovi have perhaps not been as favorable as they could have been. Nevertheless, Ovi is here and represents a great opportunity for Flash mobile developers in the long term.
Over on Gamasutra at the moment, there’s a (sponsored) feature on the various gaming experiences that can be found on Ovi, covering Flash, Java, Symbian and N-Gage. Moket’s soccer-skills game “Palleggio” is featured as an example of Flash Lite games on Ovi.
Thought I’d show you the purchasing process in Ovi Store on the mobile client (yet to see what you can do through the website) as it happened when I purchased Darren’s Poker Solitaire Flash Lite game … Read More
We seem to have been lucky enough to witness the soft launch of the new Nokia Ovi Store live on devices down under first! Not sure for the reason behind that … perhaps it’s because we have a high percentage of Nokia devices, or perhaps it’s because Australia starts with the letter “A” 
For those of you who aren’t aware, Nokia Ovi is the new “app store” and content delivery channel for around 30+ models of Nokia S60 and S40 devices. They have strategically merged all other distribution and content channels into Ovi, and are looking to capture the purchasing power of 100’s of millions of devices in the market.
The Ovi store website is still not open, but you can go and get the Ovi client on your Nokia device and start buying content. More countries will flow on from here and we’re expecting a formal announcement by the end of the week.
I’ve been playing around with it on a few devices this morning – here’s some screen shots of the process for installing Ovi and finding content … Read More
