This was supposed to be a glorious day for mobile phone giant Nokia. The Finnish company got out-innovated by Apple a couple of years ago with the introduction and subsequent success of the iPhone and the iTunes App Store, and has been desperately trying to catch up with Cupertino’s disruptive initiatives ever since by launching a couple of new devices on one hand, and consolidating its software & services business on the other hand.
Today sees the worldwide roll-out of Nokia’s Ovi Store, the company’s response to Apple’s App Store (and other centralized content stores for mobile phones and OS’es), and no doubt the company is watching the launch unfold on a global scale with watchful eyes. Here’s the thing: the launch is an utter disaster and I assume (hope) Nokia executives are outraged with the way things are going.
Update: the Ovi team posted a response to the recurring problems, see below.
Since I’ve seen the Nokia Ovi Store website come up a few hours ago, I’ve been trying to browse the selection of apps to select 10 that users should download to start off. I found that the store was down most of the time I was trying to snoop around, pages often didn’t load, and if they did they nearly always did extremely slowly. Despite the fact that I constantly needed to refresh and hope for pages to load, I figured that the service must be getting pounded from all the press it’s getting and was willing to forgive the slowness and regular downtime for the time being. But this has been going on for hours on end now, and there’s no sign of improvement.
It gets worse. Out of the ten applications I recommended earlier today, three suddenly disappeared from the Ovi Store for no obvious reason. Searching for them yields no results, but they do pop up in the ‘related items’ section when you’re browsing alternative applications. Nokia offers no explanation why the content suddenly became unavailable, or if and when they will be back. Meanwhile, some apps are showing up twice (e.g. Qik).
The user experience sucks too. Navigating the online store is downright complicated, and the categories being assigned to certain applications and content are way off at times. Entering basic search queries (e.g. ‘games’) often leads to zero results or a freezing page. Publisher profiles sometimes have nothing but a poorly embedded logo, an extremely short description and no link to their own website (e.g. inTouch).
To add insult to injury, we hear people with an Ovi account are unable to use their credentials for logging on to the new service, but that they are being told that there’s already a profile with their username when they attempt to register for a new account. That means Nokia is basically blocking registered users from using its new service at this point.
Update: All About Symbian lists more problems that need solving.
I’ve contacted Nokia’s press services to give them a chance to respond and detail how heavy the load on their servers has been this morning, but the only conclusion I can make at this point is that the Ovi Store launch is a complete fail on Nokia’s part with a service being rushed out the door before it was ready for prime time.
My advice to Nokia: tell us you’re open for business when you actually are.
Update from the Ovi team:
“Shortly after launching the Ovi Store at 2 am ET, we began experiencing extraordinarily high spikes of traffic that resulted in some performance issues for users accessing store.ovi.com and store.ovi.mobi. We immediately began to address this issue by adding servers, which resulted in intermittent performance improvements. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused Ovi Store users and encourage you to continue giving us feedback as we develop the service further.
The Ovi Store device client, however, has continued to perform very well and there were no reported issues from users logged on through that entry point.”
as i first mentioned a few weeks ago Nokia has a terrible Internet team. They made a few acquisitions but ended up with low quality assets. This is the end result.
Ouch, this is not really that hard to create a software download store that does not crash. You could even outsource this to a number of Indian firms who could do it for <200K.
Fail.
“You could even outsource this to a number of Indian firms who could do it for <200K.”
be honest, that’s not *actually* true is it?
Really?? then this article would be about not only network problems but how bad the software is…
I’m not sure what do you mean by ‘Internet’ team but I can assure you that all software developers that worked on this projects were top notch.
As for blanket statements on how easy it is to create a software download store for under 200k, let me just say that you have no clue what you are talking about.
Yeah, you can write the software for a store for less than $200k, maybe even school kids can do it with 0$ capital…
But you won’t get the network infrastructure for less than 200k!
I’ve always said it: Nokia doesn’t understand software.
How do you ‘understand software’ ? *rolls eyes*
Em… Compare the iphone software to Nokias? One of them “understands” software, and one of them does not “understand” software. I think you’ll figure out who is who.
Duh, now which one of these can run only one app at a time? Cut & paste?!? Has a video camera here now in 2009…
I have a VAN in my NAME, for goodness sakes, and when I clear my throat, I better have my professorship back. I’ll be sitting behind this quickmart only for the next 15 minutes, then, that’s it. I go to Steve Jobs’ Turtleneck and get my pearl-handled iMusket and open fire!…Then reload, and Open Fire!…pour in some more iPowder, tamp down, reload Open Fire…
Aleski is correct. TC is full of idiots who think they are technically savvy, but only show how lame they are with their rediculous comments.
Note: TC has a double standard. If Twitter had shown a similars experience, they would be praising Twitter for staying up even though they had long delays.
Peter, we’ve never cared, don’t know who you are, and now see that your prescience is easily worth $200 M of SV investment money.
You’re like the daily caller on Sports Radio telling the hosts you predicted the Red Wings in the Finals.
Get your own show, Urbane.
they are so cheap, and now they are paying for it.
B*tch FAIL – funny shirt
http://www.epic.../load/8-1-0-400
<3 nokia
OVI totally sucks. Maybe the Euro folk put up with this crap but Americans won’t stand for such trash.
FAIL
“The Euro folk” ?
Funny, I always thought that it was America that was a long way behind when it comes to mobile stuff. Yeah, sure, you got the iPhone first but actually us “Euro folk” don’t like to put up with crap and wouldn’t put up with some of the rubbish we read about your home-grown mobile companies doing.
Just as well you haven’t got it yet, eh?
Don’t get out much, do you lauren?
The ovi store has been a couple of years in the making. They had a good thing going with Mosh, with user contributed content, some free, some charged. It was working quite well for the way the interface in symbian is designed. But no, they had to go and break it and reinvent the wheel all over again.
“They had a good thing going with Mosh”
Really?? MOSH was the death knell for Ovi. It was full of cracked apps, ripped, unlicensed music tracks and videos. Even the porn pedlars got in there. MOSH was also a dumping ground for people who couldn’t even tell the difference between an iPhone and a Nokia 3310. MOSH was the reason why we now have to pay a fee for signing S60 apps now, as well as the reason why developers are leaving the platform in droves.
http://www.ther...okia_mosh_fail/
Oh, brother.
“Euro folk”.
As an American living in Europe for a decade, so-called “Euro folk” have a higher expectation of quality and consistency than Americans.
Nokia’s problems here have nothing to do with us versus them, but rather with poor project management and QA. Can happen anywhere.
Yeah, good point. It can happen anywhere. Moreover, as Andy said above the mobile industry of US is not as sophisticated as other parts of the world.
“euro folk” definitely have a higher standard than americans. case in point: american cheese.
Hahahahahaha! That’s the funniest thing I’ve read in ages! Us Euro folk….we’re so last century
This has descended into a cultural war as expected. Nokia’s “poor man’s Iphone apps store” represents the EU I guess.
I like Europe and worked in Germany for awhile. I can tell you that 90% of the consumers there do not use the much vaunted, “advanced” european wireless networks since everyone relies on text messages and spend 5 Euros for some shitty Eminem ring tone, that’s it. The US has shitty carriers that try to have competing networks and standards, and they’re big on “push to talk” for whatever reason, I guess it makes people feel like they’re Secret Service Agents.
But guess what, superior European networks can’t handle the Amazon Kindle .
JD, read the article you’re linking to…
they can — it is Amazon which won’t be able to pay the bill of building EVDO over whole EU
and yes, choosing evdo in US had been (probably) smart move, or at least the cheapest one, but here in Europe evdo considered to be wrong choice… or do you believe whole Europe should move & change own infrastructure just for one little trinket called Amazon?..
Yes, you Euro folk are all so quaint, with your wooden shoes, tiny cars and your metric system! How silly you all are, compared to us Americans, with our country-western music, chicken McNuggets, and obviously superior society!
Go back to texas and start your own country… Ya’ll
ha-ha-ha, I feel sorry for the society that consists of such idiots
Wondering how americans are still putting with the SMS (text messages) fees the american mobile companies are asking?? (a rip-off)
The Euro folks don’t put up with that because they don’t have that…
Lauren,
Nobody cares about America when it comes to the big mobile manufacturers, look at GSMArena.com Nokia and Samsung have just announced 5 piss poor phones for AT&T, Nokia and Samsung care about the big mobile market which is Europe, Asia and emerging markets such as India and Africa so I guess they dont really care that the Americans ‘wont put up with it’
You Fail.
indeed.
just imagine, for markets like India, nokia has about 600 M sales, almost twice the population of whole USA.
Why would they consider even launching a single handset with US Carrier?
US should be thankful of nokia that they are atleast considering US Market.
How can nokia fail to scale a site for a day yet sites like facebook can do it for years.
Sorry for them anyway.
Facebook didn’t get slammed with 1000x normal traffic on their first day, they’ve been building slowly for years.
Hopefully this is just traffic induced and will go away when every blog writer’s dog isn’t trying to be the first to write a review of the new Ovi.
“Hopefully this is just traffic induced and will go away when every blog writer’s dog isn’t trying to be the first to write a review of the new Ovi.”
= Hope FAIL.
Agreed. Consumers have no use for trash, and store.ovi.com does not up the game at ALL for any of their competitors. hope for fail.
Hey companies like NOKIA should be able to figure out that they’d get 1000x more love than normal the first day… That’s AWS is for… They should have known that!
You expect small start-ups that experience massive traffic spikes to have outages and dragginess … it must be embarrassing to Nokia though. You’d think w/ their resources and brand value, they’d be pretty meticulous about how they stress-test a new web experience before rolling it out en masse. I’m sure that some people are very pissed off internally right now and that there is a lot of bobbing and weaving going on.
and after all, it isn’t like they should have expected a big increase in traffic. heck, they only rolled out a service to 50m potential consumers. why would that generate such an ‘unprecedented’ increase?
it’s called LoadRunner
Hehe.
Let the big guys be as bad as they want, people. It’s the only possible way for us – the smaller or outright small guys to earn our chunk of bread and butter – wait for them to fail big, then come up with a smart solution.
I can’t believe how actually bad this is. It’s a real nightmare. And I’m a Nokia fan!
…but if this was Apple they would be raving and how large their spikes were… “.. so big that is crashed the whole system. WOW”
the last iPhone OS update crashed the Apple servers, and they were anything but crowing, because that would have been so *fucking stupid*
Well I’m a Apple fan and what you said was totally true.
I just hope iPhone 3.0 won’t bring down iTMS all over again.
I’m pretty sure they’ll get it right soon.
How quickly you forget Apple’s poor launches of e.g iTunes and MobileMe! Apple soon fixed their problems, please judge Nokia by whether they do likewise.
http://arstechn...s-standards.ars
iTunes and MobileMe had the benefit of being regarded rather innovative at their time. Nokia, being a definite late follower, cannot fall back on that. Having the opportunity to obeserve for years how it’s done (by direct competitors) and then failing so miserably on day one is simply embarrassing.
Just like Google was a late follower?
Just checked back in my email archive, I had the first invite from Ovi on 1/22/08. Thats ONE AND A HALF YEARS…asking me “see what the Ovi store can do for you”. Apr 16, 2008, access to Mosh was stopped with users told they would be redirected to the Ovi store.
the argument of ill preparedness doesn’t fly when thats all the people involved have been doing for all this time.
Wasn’t that April 16th 2009?
I think TechCrunch is more interested in creating catchy headlines than telling what’s actually happening here. I tested the service briefly, and while it’s certainly not working perfectly, “a complete disaster” is pretty far from the reality – especially since it’s only been up for hours at this point.
Nice try, but I didn’t say the Ovi Store is a complete disaster, I’m saying the launch is. And it’s a disaster if I ever saw one alright.
If it had “Twitter,” “Google,” or “Apple” as the company name I bet TC wouldn’t be labeling it a “disaster”…
Ha!
http://www.tech...ssages-exposed/
http://www.tech...mail-deletions/
haha scott got served
owned. totally…
Oh, I got served alright! One story about Google from 2006…and the latest “negative” article about Twitter was from April? Neither has done anything bad aside from those two incidents?
::rolleyes::
WOw, totally served with that 3-year-old Gmail complaint. OWWWWW!
Neo-libertarian SV brainmuck RULZ!
TC has just become the hater sheet for shiz, kow, and similar giant intellects. Nobody needs links to see how kissy you are with these venture wet dreams that have no use to humanity.
Seriously, co-branding with Rush? Awesome move.
ROTFL
Scott FAIL.
Are you *still* on that insult web site?
We’ve told you it disturbs your father when you wake him up – it’s just not necessary to shout the same thing you are typing, dear.
Now I know you don’t want to be reminded, but you did say you’d go down today and see about that drive-through job… And please, it’s just not good to sit around in your underwear all day, and for gosh sakes, please change it! I left a whole stack of clean ones on your dresser.
Love,
Mother
Mom FAIL.
its a success, atleast they have traffic, rest issues would be ironed out. Nokia users wont mind
Is this really a worldwide launch because i am from Pakistan and when i try to open the Ovi Store this is what i get ?
Permission denied
This service is not available in your area.
Pakistan FAIL.
“Global Launch” FAIL.
FAIL FAIL
LMAO
A friend on Ufone can access OVI store, weird ;d
This service is not available for terrorists. Shift your base to Europe.
let’s wait until june… I will survive
It’s working much faster now for me =)
Maybe most people just gave up trying at the same time
It actually seems to work now.
You report on the subject above, then ridicule it down here in the comments? What do you think this does for any credibility?
Reading most comments that weren’t removed, I’d say you all must be working for Apple or running a cult.
My big issue with it is the rip-off. They want €5 for Shozu which is free on the Shozu site!
Yeah, and €20 for a mobile suite that can handle Office docs. I’m not too sure how this price is set though, could be the publisher aiming high for the store debut.
The price is set by the author. Some are just more greedy than others. My app is free there as well as on my own site.
Shameless self promotion, while forgetting to promote anything = FAIL.
Or it makes aol more credible. Yeah, I’d go with that.
You do that then…
You price your credibility far too cheap.
i think recent research has shown that there are virtually no popular and expensive iPhone apps. so watch those oki prices come tumblin’ down
Gotta love Wauters and other TC columnists constantly commenting on the comments. Stand by your work or take it down.
Don’t keep clarifying. It’s so bush league.
Actually, I do love it asshole. Standing by your work means defending it against dip shits like you. I rather enjoy the fact that Crunch’s authors engage with their readers… makes me feel like they’re earning that advertising coin if you know what I mean. As opposed to bloggers who take 20 minutes to write a story on the toilet, and leave the piece at that.
I got your bush league dick head….
comment on commenting on comments = FAIL
“Bush league” is baseball terminology…
Forget the Prozac this morning?
Disagree. It’s called a “conversation.”
Morons:
It’s a commentary section among readers–not the author.
The article should stand or faill on its own merits.
J-School 101, retards.
BTW: Reading you guys clarify “bush league” to me as a baseball phrase is laugh out loud funny–ggiven most of you couldn’t throw a baseball if your coding lives depended on it.
A bunch of George Wills–you http://www.nbc....achine/2734/are.
The article stands on its on merit. And in case you haven’t noticed… journalism is evolving… as it must. Any “standard” that refuses to evolve with times will die. Thats Life 101 – Survival of the fittest. The idea of “print it and that’s that” is the dinosaur mentality that’s massacring the paper medium. Users embrace what technology will allow, kudos to any “journalists” who straddle that boundary.
And I don’t code…
with the “app reality check” article of yesterday the apps hype is over. if i was nokia i would let it go. they should give the apps away for free to subscribers. they will all be free in the near future anyway. ovi is a stupid name also. sounds like a feminine product. their focus should be to become the ultimate all included app network. the best app ever created is the safari browser app to connect to the internet. the greatest app ever created will bridge the two digital mediums virutally seamlessly.
MyLocator.mobi – location is king
Yeah, Ovi sound’s like a shampoo or Ass Wipe to me… They Should have called it “Nokia App Store”
Ovi sounds like a brand of Douche.
LOL
Hey Everyone:
I think I’m the cause behind Dante’s anger, lashing out and half-baked thoughts.
Sorry. It seems as though I am responsible for a lot of his misery. Lack of employment, never seen boobies, coding endlessly, and writing angry letters to this incredibly mediocre wannabee blog.
My bad. If only I were taller…
Lonely regards:
Dante’s fantastically tiny penis.
PS:
Agree it was poorly executed. I have an Ovi account and I had to get another one for the App store, which seems silly.
Browsing was fine, but then I’m in Finland.
Like others have said, in the long run it really doesn’t matter if there are technical problems for a couple of days.
I tried to get Ovi Store from Nokia Download and it pointed me to store.ovi.com web page, not an app. Anybody got the same result?
I have been waiting for Ovi Store for months (and a decent way to get decent software for my just-under-thousand-euros-phone) but I must say – it is a disaster.
They should have got a LOT more applications to the launch. They should have got their servers ready for the launch. They should have linked ovi.com and store.ovi.com better (eg. I needed to change my device from MusicXpress to E90 although I’ve set E90 on my ovi.com-account. Why?)
I believe that it is Symbian that is doomed. No one wants to code for Symbian and no really innovative software is ever created for Symbian. Nokia should switch off Symbian and make it fast. (For high-end-models at least) Thats the only way to get software and innovative content for our phones. That is what we want (eg. to upload to Facebook etc easily. Now its only ShoZu, which is a *fail* as you can’t secure your uploads)
The problem is, when Nokia stripped all the illegal content from MOSH, what you see on Ovi is all they were left with. That’s what happens when you trust it to the “honesty” of the end users.
I truly believe Nokia will fix these silly issues and come back soon! I Love to see more free and quality content..
Yes we get it Techcrunch, you hate Europe…
that made me laugh out loud.
The name Ovi gums it up for me. I think it means ‘door’ in Finnish. Just doesn’t translate as a powerful brand name in English. I’m a Nokia N95 owner, and as powerful as the device is, it’s not intuitive and offers an average at best web experience.
I have no big plans to visit their new app store. I’m just counting down the days til the iPhone has video capture capability. Once that happens, game over.
They probably tried to emulate IKEA in using Scandinavian or Scandinavian-sounding names to see if it sticks.
They also probably tried to emulate the IKEA business model… sell shit broken, and have the buyer try to put it together when they get home….
(You knew that was coming.)
Hey Everyone:
I think I’m the cause behind Dante’s anger, lashing out and half-baked thoughts.
Sorry. It seems as though I am responsible for a lot of his misery. Lack of employment, never seen boobies, coding endlessly, and writing angry letters to this incredibly mediocre wannabee blog.
My bad. If only I were taller…
Lonely regards:
Dante’s fantastically tiny penis.
This is flaming, retarded, and typical of the Apple fanboy mentality that makes so much digital media journalism so repetitious, soulless and dull.
Shut up, its awful, i’ve got a Nokia phone and its so unintuitive.
So hold on, I have to go into Download, Download Ovi Store, Reboot my phone, Go into installations, find Ovi Store, Load it up, wait for it to download content (ages)
The problem is and will always be is this is built ontop of Symbian. Until Symbian is out the door nothing will change, its a sea of menus in a horrible unsexy UI.
I seriously cannot believe this is the end product of something in development for so long, I knew it wouldnt be good but nothing as weak as this.
Everything about Symbian and the way the Nokia menus are made sucks… it is counter intuitive. Besides Symbian can’t quite utilize the power of the hardware beneath… (Some phones are more powerful than your average netbook)
I’ve been looking for a Linux replacement firmware for my E51… Cos I heard one guy ported ARM Linux to his Siemens Symbian phone with dual boot…
Anyone knows about such a project?
Yeah, calling anything non-Apple ‘crap’ immediately means the writer is an Apple fanboy. Brilliant theory if it wasn’t for the fact that even Nokia users are complaining.
MC Deli wrote:
“This is flaming, retarded, and typical of the Apple fanboy mentality that makes so much digital media journalism so repetitious, soulless and dull.”
Let me guess, MC, you’re a…..Microsoftie! You’re wearing a MacSux T right now!
But there are no spelling mistakes in your turd, so I’ll guess that you’re a paid Microsoftie commenter. Say hello to the fat stinking sweaty bastard for me.
not really surprised here…I tried using ovi contacts and calendar and gave up in frustration …the site was often inaccessible..as for the usage…syncing contacts usually ended up losing most phone numbers…i still use and love my E71…but I sync with googlesync….nokia hardware, is great, mobile software (s60) is servicable but their online stuff is to be avoided at all costs!!!!
I am very sorry for Nokia. It has always been on my list of dream companies to work for, and it’s so sad to see what’s happening.
I have many friends who work in Nokia both in Finland and here in the UK, and at a dinner last week with a couple of them I heard there will be hundreds of new lay offs pretty soon.
If also these new projects aren’t going as hoped, it’s not looking good for Nokia.
Step away from the ledge…
Most likely some upper exec under budgeted the team… and this is the result. That same exec will mostly fire someone, throw money at the problem, and give himself a bonus.
I agree that Symbian is on its deathbed–weezing on a retroware IV line and hoping for socialized medicine that it might only find in Finland.
That said, it may be time for Nokia to adopt Android and see a big jump in users… it also would give them access to the Andriod Market–which will most likely eclipse the AppStore by 2012 according to analysts. Then, they won’t have to worry about attracting developers to an old & tired OS–it can leverage an entire world-wide community of developers who are making apps for the multitude of devices that will be sporting Android.
Who knows? That said, Ovi (10mg per day) is an epic fail so far.
HOURS of downtime? Oh my god! A catastrophe! I can’t stand any longer…
Honestly, who on earth (other than techcrunch’s editor) cares whether a service starts to work properly today, tomorrow, next week or next month? It will take years to really fly in any case, so what does some tiny downtime at the beginning matter?
Because it means i wont use it again, oh and also because its RUBBISH
It doesn’t matter if YOU won’t use it again.
99 % of the potential users haven’t even heard of Ovi yet. Nokia is having good time polishing Ovi, using impatient nerds as beta testers, so that it will be in good condition when the real masses arrive.
I won’t use it again either. And I won’t let my wife and kids use it. Or my parents. Or the in-laws. Or my co-workers. Or the mailman. Why?….cuz it sucks.
Dante – enough.
Come, let us go back to the Compound.
You know the Outside World fears our family leadership, for they don’t understand The Way.
By the way, a message was left for you.
Your tiny dick – Fail
Half the people in Nokia don’t understand what the Ovi proposition is how can the public.
and they won’t unless you expect them to have to go into Download, Download the App Store program etc etc etc zzz. Come on how much crap is there already on a Nokia phone hidden within the folders that you have never used.
The masses won’t arrive.
Flyscreen is probably the only interesting thing and its crashing and getting the website error screen all the time argh
I can’t even get the Ovi homepage to load at all. Have been trying for an hour. Haven’t they heard of Akamai?
Akamai — I am also known as?
Yes, nokia is akamized. There is few dynamic things that needs to be optimized better way.
Ha, there’s about 5 apps and 1,000 ring tones. What a piece of crap.
2 of the apps are ringtone creators. HAHAHAHAHA…
George Linardos from Ovi Store here. As reported, upon going live, we’ve seen strong traffic from all over the world. But yes, we have also seen some unexpected performance issues on the site that is accessed through desktop browsers. The team has been banging away and continues to monitor the situation. As with any new service, we appreciate comments to help improve the service and I will continue to report back. If you do send feedback, please let us know what Nokia device you are using. Please check out our official statement at blog.ovi.com and in the meantime we recommend downloading, installing, and using the Ovi Store application for your Nokia device or by typing store.ovi.com into your Nokia’s mobile browser — these are the best ways to experience Ovi Store. Thanks!
George why is the user experience so clunky, slow and poor? The only difference between Ovi Store and Download is a few tabs and gradient graphics?
George…. can you not read? People are having problems with the Ovi store and you recommend that in the meantime they should use the Ovi store? The best ways to experience Ovi Store suck. If this is how you guys handle feedback… however premature… your store is a total FAIL.
Dante…. can you not read?
>The team has been banging away
That’s why they couldn’t read!
i think ovi store can be experienced from a client application on your nokia device or through your mobile browser. I guess they do this to get good coverage across a number of S40 and S60 devices. you can go to download! and find Ovi Store application to download, install, and use it on your Nokia device. I did this with myself with my N96 and 5310 in the UK and the clients work great.
Coding losers. You both FAIL.
Seeing real Breasts: FAIL.
Going to Prom: FAIL.
Leaving Mother’s Basement: FAIL.
Catching Baseball: FAIL.
Seeing the Sun: FAIL.
Having any future: FAIL.
Not being Pathetic: FAIL.
Making Dad Proud: SYSTEM FAIL.
what was this abt?
Using a tagline that is overused and no longer funny. …..Fa
nevermind
You are exactly like the people you hate
I am just not that confident that Nokia can catch up to the power of the iPhone or any cell phone builder for that matter.
Who has the most number phones circulating?
Nokia but who is going to be making more in revenue soon?
Nokia!
ah right i thought they posted a 90% loss in profit my bad!
As developers of highly successful apps for the iPhone (beamME for contact exchange), we’ve been monitoring the progress of other platforms’ app stores very closely.
Each time I see a pre-release (or public) instance of a replica store, I’m shocked at the insipid idiocy of the platform vendors in question. Whether it’s RIM, Nokia or Google, they are all making a fundamental strategic error, IMHO – and its the thing that keeps legit, small developers *out* of their ecosystem: Pride.
All these companies needed to do was copy Apple’s iTunes App store for starters. Use the same categories, the same rating mechanism, the same simple feedback system, the same payment concept. It is a _proven_ approach with many smart (and some dumb) user innovations. The Apple way is a great place to begin.
Then, platformers could have expanded, adjusted or scaled their approaches based on their unique users requirements (feedback is quick and loud in this environment).
Instead, they’ve continued to perpetuate the same stupid mistakes they always make. And it is those same, stupid mistakes that keep revenue-oriented, customer-focused developers away.
I’d also point out that the lack of news from RIM (no AppWorld stats, hmm?) does not bolster developer confidence that anything meaningful is happening there either.
So, so far – there is only one place in the mobile world that legit developers can make money: the Apple AppStore. Fan boy or not, these are the facts – and given the terrible opening salvos from Nokia/RIM/Google/Microsoft, this is unlikely to change anytime soon…though I’d love to be proven wrong.
Gabe Zichermann
CEO, rmbrME
100% agree
Great comment. Hope the rest of them listen.
A lot of companies put sub-standard teams on projects like these app stores. They realized they have to have the app store, but the senior engineering and marketing folks don’t give it whole-hearted focus because they didn’t think of it themselves. So they assign their B-team people to the project, keeping top performers on their perceived ‘core’ projects, with predictable results.
100% Apple FanBoy!
in the mobile app store space, being an apple fan boy put dollars in developers’ pockets right now. no other store comes close. do you really think devs want the other stores to fail? there’re 50m customers in nokia land.
I agree that No store comes close, Nokia can’t be like Apple!
Apple is a lifestyle isn’t it?
Everything with a Apple logo and i in front is awesome1
I am no fanboy!
Hear, hear, Gabe. Silly fool Other Software Companies! Why, with Apple’s fine standard of open hardware and free-flowing communication with developers, they’d be fools, fools i say, to take up with distributors that offered them millions of devices on many platforms, when all they need to do is buy MAC equipment and obey. No, Gabe, I know you’d “LOVE to be proved wrong” but you’ll see: In the end, which I guess was today according to all the sharpies in the lower altitudes of the Valley – in the end, everyone will drive Buicks and trade contacts through brilliant enterprises such as whateveryou said, and we will surely rmembrU, not as a baldface sycophant and promo seeker, but as another dweeb who understands the rest of the world is just all wrong.
And don’t forget the impending lawsuits falling from the Apple tree because “Nokia pinched our ideas” *Weeee weeeee weeeee*
Put an apple on a turd and it’ll sell millions.
at least the apple store attempts to put the user experience first. this ovi thing, why do i have to login to see? ridiculous. Nokia is more interested in what customers can do for them. pre-emptive logins are the WORST!
You only have to login to download/purchase an application. Not to see the details page.
Apple is Tom Sawyer and the Developers are the kids with the paint brushes.
Tell me, when EVERYONE is on your device, No one stands out.
And no one is getting paid either.
Which according to you economics majors, is a good thing?
Morons.
no problem at all now when i tried ovi. guys have a little patience…
Robin Wauters, i seriously doubt your credibility now, as i think you overacted… the UI is easy to navigate… you have your own problem to resolve before commenting any further in future about difficulty with navigation…
Yeah the UI is a real treat! idiot
I just got Ovi Store working… on my iPhone. It rocks!
Oh…wait. My bad. That’s the App Store. Sorry. Disregard.
All you people including the writer have no clue what it takes for the Worlds Largest Manufacturer of mobile devices to rollout the worlds Largest ONLINE STORE…becoming a truly INTERNET company…you clearly are tech dumb and are being very harsh as this will blow the app store out of the water as how many devices can you download the apps onto from the app store ..compare that with Nokia’s market share across the globe and you obviously had servers heavinggggg under all the load….you or anyone aint seen nothing like this. This is not about being American or European or Cheap or expensive..its about who is most relavant to people’s lives and Nokia is the Largest Internet Brand in the World with the largest portfolio of devices..so they are damnnn RELEVANT TO ALOT OF PEOPLE…and the world doesnt begin and end on the shores in the US..the biggest US brands like COKE,etc are bigger outside the US than in the US
Hey Simbian SISsy Google is the Largest so called Internet brand!
And market share has nothing to do with servers under heavy load! (There hell lot of Nokia phones out there without net access)
Again 99% of Nokia users don’t know about Ovi yet…
And they will never know!
Actually, there are nowadays relatively few Nokia devices _without_ (capacity to) net access…
I meant folks with nokia phone but without data access plans…
you sounds like Nokia corporate employee. Honestly. All companies try to stay relevant, at least by too much saying that… just listen to their sophisticated bulshit such as ‘Largest Internet Brand”, “Largest Car Manufacturer”, “Largest Drink Producer”, blah blah blah… even words are capitalized (frankly, who except of corporate management will even think about capitalizing obvious words..).. However the truth is that some go into oblivion regardless size. GM goes, Coke goes, probably Nokia goes.
Worser: Interbrew is now bigger than Coca Cola.
The reason this will fail is that when I went to browse games for my N95-3, I discovered that N-Gage isn’t compatible with the phone. In spite of the pre-installed N-Gage demo.
Anyone who doesn’t have the latest device will go crazy when then find the only apps they want aren’t compatible. What do you do? Buy a newer, more expensive phone? No, you probably give up on the Ovi store.
Nokia has too many devices and too many software variations for this to work well.
iPhone/Android work because they don’t have this problem.
That is too bad. Timing and execution should have been better organized.
Another problem is that developers have some many choices for hosting and distributing their applications. Why go to Ovi when I can go to Getjar.com?
Vodofone has betavine.net, Qualcomm has Plaza, Getjar.com, HostJ2ME.com, Midlet.org, and the list goes on.
Developers are challenged to maintain their apps in many app stores. To compound the problem, there are different standards for signing and application certification.
There needs to be a single place for Symbian/J2ME/etc apps, ringtones, and other downloads. A place where consumers can go to easily fing content and where developers know the certification standards and have the comfort of knowing that there is a large audience.
Cant the carriers and manufacturers come together through standards and collaborate to create a compelling store?
BTW, Sun is also working on an app store which may include mobile content…
Good to see that Nokia has the ability to engender so many comments on TechCrunch in such a short period of time.
It’s really, really sad to see just how bad the Ovi Store really is. Nokia is in real danger strategically of being squeezed from both ends: they are rapidly losing the smartphone game, and they will start to lose the mid-range phone market too pretty soon. Android is a bigger threat to Nokia in the near term than to Microsoft, regardless of Google’s original target (MSFT). The Ovi Store simply underscores how bad Nokia is when it comes to software…
Nokia is basically no different than a mobile operator when it comes to their ability to execute on software.
Ooops! Somebody’s getting the axe for this botched launch.
That’s what could happen when you get desperate and try to hack out a quick solution to a problem – disaster!
Nokia works like you would expect from a corporate of engineers. They’re good at logistics to get transistors to factories and phones to retail channels etc. but don’t get what a “service” or “internet” really is. Or, there are people who get it, but they’re prisons of the corporate culture.
Nokia can’t JFDI. Instead of starting from simple things like client needs and then scaling up, they start from architecture and infrastucture. And nobody gets that right from the start.
I don’t have a single Apple product and I really would like to see Nokia success, but they have deal with the corporate issues first. I think this Ovi Store launch is just a sign of a bigger problem.
testing
Go Tech Crunch!! Focus on the negatives. Did you even try the client on the phone? Works perfectly.
Here’s a review: http://greenerd...rst-impressions
Negatives rock! When executed properly.
Dante! Are you *still* on that insult web site?
We told you that you shouldn’t yell the things you are typing while you type them – it’s not necessary, dear, and it wakes your poor father up.
Now I know you don’t like me reminding you over and over, but you promised TODAY that you would go see about job at the drive thru. You can’t spend the rest of your life sitting in your underpants at that computer.
Mom FAIL… again.
You go down to the first large, green, bold roster of hyperlinks labeled, “Responses”. Count them.
The > the number of these complete and total circle-jerk links to blogs which simply regurgitate the article, the > the desperation of TC to justify its latest failure / misinformation.
They’re just trying to get page views, after all.
Finland has about 5 million people. Nokia has half of its entire research staff in Finland. Some years ago Nokia hired every single student who could write any kind of code because they needed so many new workers. It became a joke and all smart people started their own business or went to work for another company.
Not only that but if you have a bright idea at Nokia you will be fired or ignored. When iPhone came out Nokia was quick to state that they had invented touchscreen phones years ago but decided againts manufacturing one because nobody would use it. The man who invented short text messages while working at Nokia was fired.
Now that Nokia has created the buzz around ovi and thousands are frustrated they can even better enjoy it.
It works! Perfectly
Maybe I’m the exception, but I signed into my Ovi account from my Mac, selected WorldMate 2009 for download, received an SMS message with the download link, clicked on the link and installed the software, which works as expected. No problem. I then browsed the app store from my N95, selected Photobucket, which I then downloaded and installed. No problem.
There’s a huge difference between Apple’s AppStore, which only has to support a very small number of mostly-compatible devices, and Nokia’s Ovi store, which has to support literally hundreds of different phones. Different music, video, and apps work on different phones. Almost 40% of the world’s mobile phones are made by Nokia, so that’s a lot of phones to support.
It can be difficult to live in “twitch” mode, making summary judgments and having very little patience for sites that are not fully baked at their moment of launch. The Ovi store clearly isn’t in the same league with the iTunes music store, which has been around for several years, but I wouldn’t write them off just yet.
I’m not a Nokia shareholder or employee, and probably qualify as an Apple fanboy, though not a very young one.
Perhaps the only *sane* comment on this site. TC is probably going to become irrelevant long before Nokia or Symbian become irrelevant.
As for “So, so far – there is only one place in the mobile world that legit developers can make money: the Apple AppStore. Fan boy or not, these are the facts” – is a completely incorrect statement. Mobile application/software developers that have been on the cutting edge of innovation (over the last 6-7 yrs) in the areas of graphics, multimedia, gaming and etc to name a few have been making upwards of 4-10M USD per quarter by licensing their software to OEMs/ODMs, OS vendors and silicon vendors directly.
With a population of less than 300M the US market had been ignored by the bigger device makers for a long time. RIMM and AAPL found their niches. The real question, at least IMHO, is how will RIMM adjust to Android and iPhone. And what’s next from AAPL beyond 3.0? And can they continue to innovate? In the established mobile handset markets it has always been about “replacements”. In other words would a user replace their existing device. In the past users in the US have shown a high barrier to replacing their phones and the replacement cycles were much longer compared to their European and Japanese counterparts. So would AAPL be able to come up with the next device that would make an existing iPhone user to replace their phone? Or would it go down the Motorola path of “RAZR” and then doldrums? In the emerging markets such as India and China it is all about *cost* and basic service. So don’t clearly understand how the equivalent of a $80 data plan would fly there.
So the app store wars are fun to watch and are good PR. But IMHO the real battles and revenues are elsewhere
Same here. No problems when installing and accessing the site.
The biggest problem I had was actually finding the client amongst all the “Jamster” crap that came with the device. And to top it off Jamster’s content is £4.50 a week (without the data charge) or £4.50 per download. That’s more than the cost of my soddin contract.
focus on what matters
the initial glitch is meaningless long term. Is the app store good tomorrow?
the sad thing is Nokia has long had far superior phones to the Iphone (and still does) … but hasn’t been able to convince app developers and high end consuers that their models are as sexy.
Apple? marketing geniuses.
exactly. So what if the servers run great tomorrow the UI and experience will still be the same
…….only for a short while until they actually act on user feedback and make improvements.
Yeah on the oh so flexible Symbian UI what exactly are they going to do to it? Add another menu?
Oh, Nokia!
There was a time when the Nokia user-interface was considered the best and most user-friendly, and every other phone manufacturer was criticized about their confusing and unintuitive menus and operation.
That was what – 5 years ago? Around that time, I agreed.
To this day Nokia still relies on its past “best user experience” acclaim. Today the competition has made Nokia’s phones feel over-complicated, with menus that have too many layers I care to count.
It seems Nokia’s phones are made by engineers to engineers. They leave out the “user” in their user-interface and more so in the overall user experience. They either over-estimate or under-estimate the users, rarely getting it right.
Can this be faulted to Symbian alone, I doubt it. It’s the Nokia-state-of-mind: populate the world with phones, and populate the phones with features (which you don’t know exist let alone how to use unless you read the manual). They focus on making so many devices that they hardly ever get one right.
The reason for the Nokia-state-of-mind comes of course from within the corporation, not from the end-users or what the market needs. Nokia should cut their product portfolio from the 100 (!) models currently on offer on their website to 20 models (or even less), and do those well in all aspects (UI, features, design, quality). But try telling that to the product managers (again engineers), who are so fond of their latest baby phones, and so driven by the internal corporate competition, that they do not care about what their customers want.
Nokia is quantity over quality. Half-baked phones, half-baked services. That’s what we get. That’s Nokia. Blame on the executives, who’ve organized the company so that everyone is competing against one another, making teamwork impossible on projects that cross corporate structures.
Nokia won’t get it right until they fail on epic scales. Nokia Music Store. Wow. Xpress Music 5800. Wow. Ovi Store. Wow. Please, un-impress us some more.
Every Nokia phone is the same, the N95 is the same as the N96 interface wise, at least Sony Ericsson step things up every new hero handset
Really????
My Nokia N95 is way different to my old 6600 original. You obviously haven’t heard of Kastor UI, which is gradually being introduced to the N series of Nokias. The N95 was the first handset to use some of the UI in it’s multimedia carousel and they’ve gradually introduced bits to the OS over time.
On that basis, I think you need to swap the words Sony Ericsson with the word Nokia, because every Sony Ericsson I’ve come across (apart from the P series) has the same UI.
yeah way to go compare phones that are 4 years apart.
Compare N80, N95, N96, N78, etc all N Series phones are the same piece of crap in a different shell.
Now compare the K series phones on SE, k750 to K850 loads of UI changes for the better. I wouldnt call the P series mass market.
That multimedia carousel is the most pointless bad UI within…a bad UI. Now tell me why I need a slow clunky carousel with its own dedicated button on the handset when its already in the menu. Its absolutely turd user experience, confusing and waste of memory.
They are building all this stuff onto an already weak os. Every time the cursor flicks or the time changes on the screen did you know Symbian redraws millions of lines on the screen draining battery?
Mesc, somehow Nokia keeps failing upward. You, dante, pow and all the other Apple queers and diversity haters can keep *saying* “half-baked phones, half-baked services” but that doesn’t do it. Not even here. Look at the E71x that AT&T is selling for 99 bucks, not $199 or $299 or the original user-experience Apple offered of paying $200 more at 2007 launch than the price-drop a couple months later. Nice.
And look at the “half baked” hardware on Nokias:
*video cam, 3.2 to 5 MP – Nokia yes, Apple no
*multitasking OS – Nokia yes, Apple still no
*Cut & Paste! – 2004 Palm Treos even, yes. Not iPhone
* Nokia keyboards- excellent; Apple – look at all the iPhone owner’s apology tag lines on their email
* Restrictions – Nokia, none. “Jailbreak” your iphone, services are cut back. Forced upgrades to retain services.
* Free market – Nokia, all the way. Apple – can only sell through Apple, develop on Apple boxes, after you pay for SDK; users buy mandatory phone plan through a single carrier.
If you knew anything about coding:
Nokia: new Web Run Time – html and Javascript
Apple: Proprietary “Objective C” that limits you to their Lego-set of pre-fab objects. (Fine for fart programs; excruciating for tying multiple services together for more intelligent apps.
Nokia: You pick: Symbian, Java, QT, Flashlight.
Apple: NO SOUP FOR YOU! I take back your license! NEXT!
You conveniently forget that iPhone phux up on a regular basis, has terrible call quality according to objective sources (uhg. old media!) And their personal contact suite just a few months back had everybody with an iPhone pissed off, because Apple didn’t even handle that one, single service correctly.
The evidence just goes on, for anyone who’s not just trying to be an annoying SV fuck. Join the Republican Party, for all we care. Just look at this blog: you got the blog author blabbing all over the comments and changing the story on top (Nice advance in Journalism, dante, right? Makes accountability prime, so all you ultimate frisbee duches start out with the freshest, truest information that gives your rants the credibility of did-not, did-so, takes-one-to-know-one.)
And then you have an array of discourse thatconsists of a few people with some factual basis for comments and a bunch of dillweeds spazzing Fail Fail Fail, like it gives them some power?
If you really believe in what you say and how visionary you are, why don’t you run along and go get some venture capital for your priceless contributions to use ever-more advancing technology to optimize the stream of corrupted info to consumers with ever-declining intelligence?
Surely, we all will forget you and your comments – but you’ll remember as years go on, and the FTC busts down Apple, and you’re carrying a Nokia around in your pocket, that you were one of the little sycophant assholes railing away in ignorance. So, save that for yourself somewhere when you need a gage, “Am I a difference-maker?”
(HINT: if the color doesn’t change from now, you’re pretty much a waste of protoplasm. Consider organ donation immediately.)
This “defence” of Nokia’s excellence did a very good job at underlining the Nokia-state-of-mind. Keyboard (?!). Multitasking. Restrictions. Jailbreaking. Symbian. Java. Blah. Blah. Blah.
All those are irrelevant to the *end-users* who simply want an unparalleled user experience from a phone that has superb design and quality. That’s well-done, not half-baked, from the user’s perspective. The only perspective that actually counts.
The reason why Nokia does not get this right can be derived from just about every argument you made in your post.
I am glad to be in the 63 per cent of mobile phone buyers who prefer to choose something other than Nokia. Free market – all the way. To each his own.
Calm yourself, Meth, err Mesc:
Nokia just launched Ovi a couple of days ago, so time will tell whether it failed or not.
Apple’s Iphone “unparrelled user experience” is second to none—-
–except of course, if you want to actually make a phone call.
Which implies, of course, that you actually KNOW living breathing human beings who actually provided you with their phone numbers.
Which you nd I know has never happened. Which explains your love for the IPhone.
you need to calm down son, just a phone yeah?
Stick with Nokia as the years go on they might not even be around
http://www.comp...-falls-per-cent
At least if your iPhone goes mammaries skyward you can use it as a surf-board.
LOL