Ovi hasn’t even been live for a week, but I’m noticing an interesting trend already in sales numbers from Moket’s own content. If you’ve read my previous blog, you’ll know that I feel there are some issues particularly with browsing the Ovi desktop website that are preventing consumers from having the best experience.
One of those issues is that by default, the website assumes you have the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music device, and only shows you content for that device. If you deep link into a particular product’s page that isn’t supported on the 5800 (or other S60 5th Ed phones), then the content appears as though it has been removed. Also, there’s not as much content available for s60 5th Ed phones, so there doesn’t look to be as much content overall in the store.
Going on our publisher record, here are devices download stats for the past 7 days (since Ovi launch):
Our game “Cipher” is so far the only asset visible in the Ovi Store that is a touch-version for S60 5th Ed (I say “so far” because we have another one, “GRORBS” approved through QA which is awaiting the final push into the live system). As you can see, Cipher is by far the most downloaded since launch. Could this be because when you go to the Ovi store by default, this is the only on of our games actually visible? Interesting to note too that that “Unknown” device category is the most tracked, which I assume is when you select “Any Mobile” as the device by which the site filters content.
I’m going to try and be as transparent as I can with the Ovi experience as I think it’s a) important for developers to understand the realitites of these types of platforms, and b) important to highlight where improvements can be made in what is arguably one of the more imortant opportunities to come around for Flash mobile developers so far.
Thanks for sharing this info Dale. Have you listed which devices Cipher is available on? Would be good to include the device models available for each Flash Lite app on oviflash.com so users have more guidance.
Thanks Bill. Do you mean have I listed all the available devices for “Cipher” on OviFlash.com? I haven’t at this point, but I can do that for mine, and hopefully as more developers give us details about their own content we can add that info too. That’s a good tip, though, thanks.
I think what my original post was highlighting might be a broader symptom though of the mechanics of the device filtering on the Ovi Store website (perhaps each item there should also list what devices it’s available on?). If I visit store.ovi.com straight up and search for “Flash” as a keyword (granted the developer has to have put this in as a keyword for their content), then you get 4 items back that are available in my region. If I got back then to the homepage and change the device to “Any Phone”, and then perform the same search. I get 75 items available to me. That’s a big difference.
Ovi Store’s design decision to default to the 5800 XpressMusic is a huge mistake.
It means that 3rd-party sites can’t link directly to apps which don’t support this particular phone!
In doing this, Ovi is giving up 2 advantages it has over iTunes:
1. the fact that it’s a (relatively) open web site and
2. the fact that it supports many older phone models.
Ori
The “Sorry, this item is no longer available.” is a bit misleading!
Where do you see these numbers? OVI stats is not available yet.
I actually had Reports active for quite some time after Ovi launched, even though many other developers I know couldn’t see them. For the past several weeks though, the Reports tab has been missing in my publisher admin, and so now I have no idea how these numbers have continued to trend. Quite frustrating