Not that long ago I posted some info about the Ovi App Wizard that Nokia had launched to help mobilise web content into Ovi Store compatible applications. One of the apps that I created with the wizard was for a site called Toy Tragic, and the Calling All Innovators competition has made the app one of the Top 10 finalists. Thanks Nokia!
To celebrate this achievement and to help with driving further usage of the app, Toy Tragic is running a competition for the month of August. Download the FREE Toy Tragic app before August 31st, and you’ll go into the draw to win an exclusive Wolverine Mighty Mugg! Offer is open to anyone who downloads the app, leaves a comment on the Ovi Store, and emails Toy Tragic with their details, so what are you waiting for! Full details here on Toy Tragic.
Winner is announced September 1st, 2010.
Posted 25 May 2010 — by Dale
Category Mobile
Alessandro and myself were recently speaking with Forum Nokia on their Ovi App Wizard product, and the podcast of that conversation has just been released (Part 1 and Part 2). Thanks to Jason and Ung-Ping for the invitation to give my thoughts.
I recently decided to do a small experiment with the Flash mobile game titles I have in the Nokia Ovi Store. They’ve been there from the very beginning of the Ovi Store at the lowest price point (1 EUR), and over the past months I’ve watched the sales dwindle to nearly zero. In saying that, I stopped marketing the apps at the end of 2009 when I started working for VHA, so to be completely fair I haven’t been putting anything into getting sales – which of course you need to do on any app store to see downloads!
So I wanted to see what the impact would be on an app that’s been in the Ovi Store for around 12 months if I turned it into a free app and continued to do no marketing (apart from what was already out in the open, which really at this point was a listing on oviflash.com). I went into the Ovi Store publish system (which has dramatically improved over the past 12 months in speed and stability) and chose one of the more (surprisingly) under-performing apps in our catalogue – Palleggio. And here’s what I discovered …
From March 2009 through to the end of Feb 2010, Palleggio (a football skills / juggling game) had a grand total of 63 paid downloads. For the first two weeks of March 2010, it had a total of 3302 free downloads.
Where were all these customers before when I was making money off these downloads hey?! So is this really surprising? No, not really – free VS paid is pretty much always skewed in this way. But does the radical jump in downloads indicate that the Ovi Store is easier for customers to download free content? Does it mean simply that Ovi Store customers (as like much of the app store patronage across devices and platforms) are LOOKING for free content? I wonder what I would see if I had a freemium version in there (i.e. a limited version of the game for free, plus a paid version with all the bells and whistles), as is the case with so many titles in the Apple App Store?
And while this might be seen in some quarters as poor app-store-etiquette, I’d be interested in doing another experiment and see what happens to the numbers if I change it back to a 1 EUR price point. If and when I do that, I’ll be sure to post the results here as well 
I’m also working with the Ovi App Wizard to create some free apps that include AdMob advertising – the results of those (Java and WRT) apps through the store will be an interesting read also!
Would be interested in hearing your thoughts and comments on your experiences with free VS paid content on Ovi Store.
Bill Perry has uploaded his slide deck from the presentation he recently gave at Nokia World 09 – “Prospering with Ovi Store”. Bill is focusing a lot more on Ovi Store for developers these days, so if you have questions feel free to ping him on his blog or catch up with him at the Nokia booth at Adobe MAX next week.
A little while back I suggested that I would try and be forthcoming with our sales numbers through Ovi so that the Flash development community could see what was happening behind the scenes with us on this new sales channel. This certainly wasn’t to say that I thought Moket’s content would be the biggest selling through the store (far from it) but I thought it would be helpful since we have been in the Ovi Store from the start.
As some of you will know, Ovi’s reporting screens were removed for quote some time while they were “fixed”, and have just become available again over the weekend. Here’s what I can show you now in terms of how things have been progressing for us: Read More
