Nokia's Ovi to Compete with iPhone App Store?
As of 2012, CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo wants Nokia to have 300 million service subscribers. In an aggressive first step, he's planning on expanding the Ovi applications environment. But he needs to act quickly as in the past year the company's shares have fallen by 50%. In a recent interview with the Financial Times Kallasvuo admits he is trying to change Nokia's direction from being a handset provider to a service provider. With a formidable rival like Apple, it will certainly be an uphill battle.
Apple iPhone owners can choose to download approximately 65,000 services from the App Store, meanwhile Nokia's Ovi only offers 4,500 applications. According to the Financial Times, "While Apple has just one phone, Nokia is trying to put mobile applications on 75 of its handsets. It is a far more challenging task." Nevertheless, Nokia aims to level the playing field with web technologies.
One way the company is hoping to catch up to Apple across all its devices is by hosting competitions to encourage Flash Lite-based development. Most recently, Nokia announced the finalists in its "Calling All Innovators" global developer competition. Categories include web applications and runtime widgets, Adobe Flash Lite-based applications, emerging market services and location-aware services utilizing Ovi Maps. While each of the category winners will receive cash awards, the Flash Lite category winner will receive an additional prize of $10,000 from Nokia's Open Screen Project Fund. Nokia needs to fund efficient distribution across 75 devices and multiple platforms, and Adobe needs a mobile poster child to sing its deployment praises across mobile, desktop, and consumer electronics devices.
If Kallasvuo wants to increase Nokia's revenue, he needs mobile developers to choose to work on web based applications before building their services with the iPhone software development kit. From here, the application marketplace that offers the best revenue split and most downloads is certain to come out on top. While no individual Nokia handset will compete against Apple's iPhone or Research in Motion's Blackberry Curve, the number of devices sold might tempt developers to make the switch.
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"If Kallasvuo wants to increase Nokia's revenue, he needs mobile developers to choose to work on web based applications" -- actually, what he needs to do first is to make the Ovi store not being a complete and utter usability failure. You can't search, and I've never even been able to *download* from my Nokia N95.
I really have no idea how Nokia can get into services. Their web sites are universally terrible.
I, for one, bow down to our Ovi overlords.
"While no individual Nokia handset will compete against Apple's iPhone or Research in Motion's Blackberry Curve"
I do believe that Nokia sells individual handsets on scales which are comparable to the above two devices, for example the 5800XM which had sold 13,000,000 units by last may.
Microsoft was always late to any party, but in the end they became market leader due to their marketing power and worldwide distribution.
Nokia is late to the party but has marketing power and worldwide distribution.
It's just a lot easier & cheaper for developers to publish content on the app store than on the OVI store
Symbian plan a binary compatibility break for the API, no app store can compensate for this. Old app will not run on new phones, new apps not run on old phones. The installed user base is reset to '0'
I have tried Ovi, didn't find any apps of interest. Tried Apple store, bought 5-10 apps
web based apps for nokia are the way to go (as they will be for aple and google) - ovi is cumbersome and completely non-user friendly; especially on the handset itself.
Getting to 300m subscribers is a great marketable target but I am a registered subscriber - and I know I am not adding value to nokia.
Maybe they should be targeting number of apps downloaded?
@Turnips: I have an 5800XM. I was told it would "synchronise with my PC and with Outlook".
To my utter disbelief, I find that it doesn't synchronise Outlook categories! Moreover, looking online, I find that Nokia's users have been *begging* them to introduce category synchronisation for *at least three years*. Yet they haven't.
With that sort of deafness to their customers, what chance do they have of dethroning Apple?
Meanwhile, I'm still using my Palm to keep organised. My Palm Vx. Ten years old, and still synchronising with Outlook flawlessly.
Why can't Nokia do what Palm was doing at least 14 years ago, and which their customers are still begging them to do?
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"While no individual Nokia handset will compete against Apple's iPhone or Research in Motion's Blackberry Curve..."
I agree with you on the iPhone comment, but Blackberry? Please. Give me an E71 / E72 any day over Research in Motion's horrific attempts at handsets.
Could we have someone write an article who does have some actual handset knowledge?
Cheers.
for my first time to know about the ovi,god bless Nokia.
Appears, guys from Nokia soon will find proper solution and Nokia will be able to answer Apple worthily.
Nokia's new entry in App store field is to be appreciated. But Apple has a long run in the field with more than 65,000 varied apps. To compete Apple is to bang against a wall, at least for the present time. Apple will be tough competitor for Nokia and it will take time for the latter to grow to even be a competitor of Apple.
Nokia's biggest success is its user friendly functionality.
http://www.topdogmarketinggroup.com
Nokia first needs to whittle down it's ridiculous line up of phones from over 200 listed on C'net to a couple dozen at most. Ludicrous logistics to support that many phones, as a manufacturer, telco or developer.
Then, they have to cut some deals with major US telcos so that their phone are actually available at reasonable prices. Nobody will buy the N97 or whatever if it costs $599 no matter how good it is.
Third, why are they now flirting with some other linux OS besides Symbian? If Symbian is good enough, push it, develop it, make a great SDK for it. If not, get rid of it.
Partnership with Microsoft? Umm, yea, right, whatever?
Fix Ovi. According to most commentators, the Ovi store opening wasn't a disaster, it was a complete disaster. That kind of advertising doesn't really attract customers or developers.
Nokia should not compete with Apple. They should make their store actually work. Don't even bother!
Nokia doesn't need to compete with Apple iPhone.
What is Apple iPhone anyway ?
The world population doesn't know about iPhone and even less about the Appstore.
50% of the world population does use, has used or knows somebody using a Nokia: that's market leadership.
Indeed Nokia doenst need to compete with Apple Iphone
Every E-series and N-series phone can multitask,but ask that of Iphone!
The screen of N-86 beats Iphone hands down,and whats lacking in S60,you can get an application off the web that does it.Iphone will stay ahead of Nokia in US,but will never come close
worldwide.
As to the point of having to develop for 75 phones,thats not the way it is.The have to develop for 3 Different OS.S40,S60 V3 and S60v5