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.
I’m looking for people who would be interested in contributing to the greater good and being participants in a short interview/survey for a project I’m working on. Questions are based on what you get out of developer portals/forums/help centres, how you use them and what you’d like to see more of.
I’m looking for people in the following categories:
- Flash developers (AIR, Flex, Flash for web) with little/no mobile experience
- Mobile developers (iPhone, Java, etc) with little/no Flash experience, or who at least don’t use Flash as a regular tool
If you feel like you fall into either of these categories, and have 15-20 minutes to spare chatting with me on the phone in the week starting May 11th, then please drop me a line (dale at moket dot com) ASAP. Your help will be greatly appreciated and publically acknowledged (i.e. there’s no money involved!).
Moket has had a very healthy relationship with Nokia right from the ealry years of Flash Lite, and I was pleased to extend this with our joining the Forum Nokia Launchpad program. Launchpad is a program that aims to give developers and companies further access to Nokia knowledge, expertise and business development opportunities.
This all comes off the back of Moket being added to the Innovation Series last year, and becoming a Premium Publisher for the Ovi store in 2009. We’re hoping that Launchpad will continue to build and strengthen the Flash mobile ecosystem, with the net result being more market opportunities for everyone.
Posted 20 Apr 2009 — by Dale
Category Moket
***UPDATED - Seems that I should have read the documentation more closely, but it seems that Ovi at this time does not support the sale of Flash mobile personalisation content, but just the standard JPG, GIF, PNG and SVG image formats instead. Funny that in our conversations with Ovi and Nokia, and through the application process, no one pulled us up on this when we were asking to sell Flash mobile wallpapers as well as applications and games? Anyway, we’ll sell the static content we have in the meantime, and hope that the Ovi system expands to accommodate Flash mobile personalisation in the future (although for the life of me I honestly can’t work out why this isn’t the case right from the start!?) ***
For those of you who haven’t heard, Nokia’s new Ovi “app store” will be launching in May, giving developers of Flash, Symbian, Java and WRT applications a new global distribution channel to 10’s of millions of devices (estimated 400 million by the end of 2010). Moket, along with many other Flash mobile developers that we know, have been accepted as publishers for the initial intake of application/game content. However, we’ve also become a Premium Publisher which means that we can also sell mobile personalisation content.
Some may be wondering why selling wallpapers would come under a “premium status” and selling full blown applications and games is the easier option. Good question I guess 
My guess (and it’s just a guess – am prepared to be given more info from a Nokia person if they would like to comment) is that Nokia want to be seen competing on the “app store” front first and foremost. This means a good QA system and a steady stream of targeted applications and games at various price points. These are not the types of content that are generally “mass produced”.
On the other hand, personalisation content is much more common with a huge gap in what is “good” and what is “not so good”, if you know what I mean Nokia would be wanting to keep a tighter grip on what kind of content they populate the store with, to avoid it becoming another over-stocked portal with a million “hot babes” or “glowing skull” wallpapers!
Anyway, you can watch a recent Nokia webinar from Bill Perry to learn more about Publish to Ovi, and stay tuned for the launch in early May.
I’ve been asked to come along as the Guest Speaker at the next event for Pitch Club in Brisbane on March 26th. Pitch Club provides an opportunity for 9 ventures (+ 1 drawn on the night) to step into the ring. Business owners can ‘pitch’ their idea for 90 seconds to a crowd of investors, business angels, VCs and other entrepreneur enthusiasts (and a few more minutes if the crowd vote them through to Finals).
I’ll be sharing my experiences with Moket over the past 4 years – both success stories and failures. I’m hoping to pass on some tips to other early-stage entrepreneurs and those looking to begin down the path of the technology start-up (but be warned … I am far from the ‘font of all knowledge’ and certainly don’t have all the answers!).
Visit the Pitch Club website for more details and to register your attendance.
