The Ovi App Wizard has been moved out of private beta and is now open for general use (although still in “beta”). App Wizard is an online service that ties directly into the Nokia Ovi Store, and allows users to create a Java and WRT application for navigating through an RSS or Atom feed from a website. The changes that have happened through the private beta is that now at the end of the app creation process, you can now publish directly to Ovi Store, and in a very short period of time it’ll be moved through QA and into the store (assuming you already have signed up as a publisher for Ovi).

Watch for some demos coming from Forum Nokia shortly, but if you’re new to Ovi Store, I’d suggest giving this a try. It’s not really designed for “developers” to use, but rather publishers of online content who don’t have access to programmers, or who are looking for a quick and low cost entry point to Ovi.

Last month I wrote about a change I had made to one my old games in Ovi Store, Palleggio, and going from a paid to a free download. The results in downloads were pretty dramatic, and now at the end of the month here’s the numbers:

• March 2009 – Feb 2010: 63 paid downloads (@€1 EUR)
• 1st half March 2010: 3302 free downloads
• Total March 2010 (one day not shown in chart): 9462 free downloads
  

As I had seen earlier with free downloads, the tyop 5 countries had changed, and Italy remained out there on top, and the non-touchscreen devices were clear leaders (even though there was a touchscreen version available).

In looking at those downloads, I also then started experiementing with including some AdMob advertising into some free apps I created using the Ovi App Wizard. I created free apps that turned the RSS feed from some of my websites into Nokia WRT widgets and also Java apps so that basically all devices supported by Ovi Store were covered. The apps covered OviFlash.com, ToyTragic.com and this blog, DaleRankine.com, and in the last 2 weeks of March, the app for OviFlash.com had 7324 downloads and started earning about AU$3 a day from AdMob advertising. Guess I’ll have the deposit for that Maserati sooner than expected

Overall, interesting stories have come out of this for me with Ovi Store. One is that without marketing these apps at all, or having them highly visible in the Ovi Store clients (web or mobile), you can still achieve some reasonable downloads. Add into that an ad-funded model, and depending ont he app you might make a tidy little sum of cash over a reasonable period of time (and by reasonable I mean you might be able to pay for the beer and pizza you used to bribe your developers to do the coding!). Real money will still only flow from paid apps that are heavily promoted and visible, or that generate significant word-of-mouth marketing.

In my last post I mentioned I was working with a new tool being trialed by Nokia called the Ovi App Wizard. It’s essentially an online wizard for converting an RSS feed into an application ready for publishing on the Ovi Store, similar to the “hello world” RSS widget app that you can create using the WRT extension for Dreamweaver and other IDE’s.

The Ovi App Wizard takes an RSS feed, some customised images and icons that you create, some skinning options, and produces a Java and WRT application. Simply take those files, plus the icons and screenshots that it also produces for you, and assuming you’re already setup as a publisher for the Ovi Store, login and upload your application files. The documentation that comes with the produced application files suggests that you can even just check all the supported devices as “Fully Tested” – which I did and the first of the apps I uploaded has just passed successfully through Ovi QA in a very quick time frame (certainly compared to when I first uploaded content to Ovi).

The first of the apps I uploaded was one for the OviFlash.com website, which showcases and links to Flash content within the Ovi Store. The WRT widget has passed through QA first and is now live on the store. The Java version is still in testing but I’m expecting this to also pass through without any problem. I also have an app awaiting approval that is for one of my other hobby sites called ToyTragic.com so I’ll let you know when those are online as well.

One suggestion I’ve had for the Ovi guys is to incorporate their Asset Generator tool into the App Wizard, so when you complete the wizard, you not only get the application files and screenshots, but also customised advertising banners ready to use. Just a thought …

Anyway, I’m interested to see how this goes. I’ve set my apps as free (cause I have a fundamental problem with people charging for an RSS feed), but you have the option during the App Wizard process of including your AdMob publisher ID and including mobile ads, which I have done in these first apps.

There are of course similar concepts to this already around the web, and in looking at the main one that I know of, I actually have a sneaky suspicion that there might be some re-skinning of services going on with the Ovi App Wizard, akin to Forum Nokia’s now defunct online SWF packager service (see if you can find out who might be powering the App Wizard – I’ll give you a clue … look for similar demo graphics!). Ovi App Wizard will certainly contribute to the number of apps Nokia can say are in the Ovi Store. Let’s see what the consumer response is from this kind of content being delivered.

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:

Now I know these numbers aren’t changing the world (Mills, that’s for you), but you can clearly see a big gap between the top 2 selling items and the rest. Why? Is it because they’re better games? No. Do they have better position on the deck? In a way, yes. You see, we have Cipher and GRORBS available for Nokia’s touch-screen devices (S60 5th Ed) as well as S60 3rd Ed key-based devices, and I’ve made it clear before that there’s a strong skew towards the touch screen devices (or at least there has been) on the Ovi store because the default device that was used to filter the visible content was the 5800 XpressMusic . Currently if I go to the Ovi Store, the default device is a Nokia E71, but don’t get me started about why this also isn’t a great option (they’ve taken off the S40 device they had there for some reason which escapes me at the moment).

So I think it’s fair to say that during the first couple of months selling on Ovi, you would have been doing better if your content was available on a 5800 XpressMusic or N97. Other than that, I’m not sure the numbers for us have been all that much to write home about, as they say.

Geographically it’s very interesting, as I think the top selling regions (and correct me if I’m wrong) were amongst some of the early adopters of the 5800 XpressMusic, so there are conceivably more of these touch devices in those markets (however like I said, I may be wrong). I certainly can’t think of too many other reasons as to why we’re doing comparatively well in Russia

Still, it’s early days for Ovi. There’s been a lot happening behind the scenes, responding to issues that the team knows are there, and tweaking things to try and improve the experience. I think there’s a fair way to go however, and certainly a lot of the changes we’re seeing or wanting should have happened prior to flipping the switch on this. But looking forward, I think for Flash developers this still represents an important platform to be on, and one that I’m sure will continue to mature as time goes on.

And remember if you DO have Flash content published on Ovi Store, you can have it listed on OviFlash.com to hopefully increase some awareness (and who knows, maybe sales?!) of your content.

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.

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.

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.

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 …

I’m just putting some finishing touches on my presentation for webDU this week – “Gift Wrapping Flash for Mobile“. I’m going to be covering the options you have for packaging Flash content for various platforms, some of the tools you can use (including a sneak peek at Adobe Mobile Packager 1.1), methods of Distribution (including Nokia’s Ovi Store) and related topics such as signing your applications.

I’m also leading a mobile BOF (Birds-of-a-Feather) group on Thursday afternoon, and will hopefully have many of the other mobile-session speakers there with me, providing attendees with an interesting discussion around the various mobile platforms represented at webDU this year (Flash, iPhone, Google, Windows Mobile).

Above all I’m really looking for to mixing with the Aussie dev community again. This is always a great event, made better by the people that attend. It’s also nice this year to be taking my wife Tanya down with me for a belated Mothers’ Day present (4 days without the kids – now that’s a gift mothers really love!).

Expect posts and tweets (@dalerankine, @moketdotcom) coming in their usual semi-regular form during the conference