Nokia, mobile phone giant, is finally getting into AppStore business with the launch of Ovi AppStore. The launch was a disaster – they probably had to much press coming out and experience a huge traffic spike. While I write this post the Ovi home page says ‘We’re sorry, Ovi.com is unavailable at the moment’. I’m sure they will figure it out and get it right in a matter of short time and developers should start getting their hands on (use this link to register as a publisher). It took me about 10 minutes to register our legal entity as a publisher. Way faster then with Apple AppStore.
Applications published on Ovi have the potential to reach 50 MLN of devices right now and 300 MLN of devices by 2012 according to Nokia. This is why you might want to become the publisher ASAP. It looks like there is only 536 applications on AppStore and some of the phone models have a few apps only. This might be a gold rush for early publishers.
Nokia believes that Ovi Store is the best opportunity for Flash developers to reach Nokia users globally, targeting 50 million users at launch in May and up to 300 million by 2012.
Revenue split between publisher and Nokia? Home page says 70% of revenue goes to developer but digging further in terms you find out that it’s true as long as user pays by credit card, once it’s operator billing you end up with 50% extracted for tax and operator fees and the resulting amount is multiplied by 0.7 which leaves the publisher with much lower payout.
Credit Card Transactions
Developer will receive 70% of end user price, less applicable taxes, returns, refunds, and bad debt.Example Calculation
Purchase Price: 5€
Tax Deduction: 5€ – 10% tax = 4,50€
Publisher Revenue: 4,50€ x 70% = 3,15€*Operating Billing Transactions
Developer will receive 70% of end user price, less applicable taxes, returns, refunds, bad debt, and operator billing charges ranging from 40% – 50%.Example Calculation
Purchase Price: 5€
Tax Deduction: 5€ – 10% tax = 4,50€
Operator Billing Deduction: 4,50€ – 40% = 2,70€
Publisher Revenue: 2,70€ x 70% = 1,89€*
Technologies/programming languages supported?
Symbian Applications, Java Applications, Web RunTime (WRT) Widgets, Flash Lite Appications
Useful process start-up links:
Ovi Developer Discussion Forums
Documents: Publisher Guide, Billing Matrix, Supported Device List as well as FAQ section
Actual Ovi Store where you can browse published apps.
Signing application issue explained
Good luck with development and see your content on Ovi soon!
P.S. We were lucky to register www.ovidevelopment.com and www.oviappreviews.com domain names a while ago, if you have a partnership or purchase offers for those please feel free to email to peter (at) moveyourweb.net
Tags: ovi, ovi appstore, ovi development
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