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 …
Here’s the general flow when purchasing content on your device, using the operator billing method:
Now a few points to make …
I think the process was pretty smooth and I didn’t encounter any issues or problems at all when purchsing. Given that there are a few more payment options than some other app store experiences (and when I say “other”, you all know who I mean!), there were a lot more clicks required to get to the point where I’ve bought, installed and launched the application I wanted.
Also, once you complete the entire process, you are still in the Ovi client, on the application’s page showing the “Download completed” status bar message, but you still have the option to “Open File”. I thought that this was referring now to the app I had just installed, but it’s actually still referring to the installer. If I click it now, it tried to install it again, rather than launching the already installed application. I restarted the Ovi client just to make sure, and found that it still wanted to launch the installer. I guess I can understand this in that at least it knows you have already bought the app before, and could easily re-install it from here if you needed to. However it might also have been nice to have the ability to launch the actual game from here.
Overall though it was a pretty good experience, and a lot better than previous experiences I’ve had buying content on Nokia devices. I suggest that you always write a review, or rate the content that you’ve bought (good and bad) as it really helps customers to see what content is “active” with other customers, and hopefully if it’s a good rating, will also help to distinguish good content in what will be a pretty crowded marketplace I’m sure as it moves forward.
So off you go – go and buy something and help feed mobile developers and their children!
hmm, so thats:
a shop app to download and install an installer which installs the app somewhere, then launches the installer it downloaded after you start the shop app again?
riiiight!
it seems one more layer of complexity for the user than a java app, and we all know what a smoking crater that business turned out to be.
the whole reason flash is successful in japan is that you don’t have the mystery “where did my file go?” problem.
compare the proliferation of flash games you play inside the browser vs. downloadable .exe apps, and its the same thing.
the fact you cant launch the app you just downloaded, seems like a fatal flaw really.
what is so difficult about this stuff? i guess the app itself has an installer, so the Ovi client has no idea what the installer did. if the Ovi app can’t figure it out, how is the user going to?
oh well. i guess its the best option so far, at least outside japan.
Fair enough DC. The jumping around between apps is a little painful and not quite as smooth as it could be, but as you said, it’s the best option outside of Japan that we have had so far. I mean if you ever tried to sell anything through the original Download! platform, you’ll know how true this is
I actually think the Ovi client may in fact be a Nokia WRT widget rather than a native application – would anyone here care to comment? If that’s the case, then I imagine there are drawbacks with the way it might be able to interrogate the device in terms of apps that are already installed (unsure here, happy to be corrected).