Is Nokia Setting Itself Up for Failure with OVI Store?

 

Today (Monday 30th March) has been an interesting one with the release of Gravity by Jan Ole Suhr, sparking a lot of conversation on Twitter about pricing, distribution channels and adoption.

What has interested me about the conversations today was the thinking that as the S60 platform is so widespread that scale should allow the cost of apps to be less and that it was really only the lack of an Apple appstore type model for the S60 platform that prevented such adoption and therefore lower pricing.

Of course Nokia have had a directory of apps available on many of the S60 phones and are ramping up OVI to provide a full scale application store more akin to Apple’s offering but I think there may be something nasty lurking.  Something that may just derail Nokia’s efforts to build a centralised store from within.

The Groundworks

For many years Nokia users have grown accustomed to finding applications from developers on the web or via a number of well known stores such as Handango.  Those users were used to buying through a range of ecommerce providers, downloading and installing them themselves.  Those users were also, importantly, used taking responsibility for two key things;

1. ensuring that they only ran as many apps as their phone was capable of supporting at any one time or accepting the crashing from memory issues, and
2. not running applications concurrently that conflicted with resource requirements. 

In other words Nokia Smartphone users were anything but Normobs.  Nokia offered up devices that were designed to be pushed, to be played  with to be tweaked.  The Nokians responded by taking full advantage of this and the Normobs, well they used the phone pretty well out of the box as it did a lot very well indeed.

Another Paradigm Arises

Along came Apple with the iPhone which challenged and changed so many things in the mobile industry, not least of which was the attitude of Normobs to augment and extend their phone with a range of easily discoverable and affordable applications.

The app store was/is superbly simple to use. You find, you click, you play.  And because Apple had taken the decision early on not to allow such potential pitfalls as background tasks to occur, users could be fairly well assured that nothing they installed was likely to interfere with the core functionality of the phone itself.

Setting Up for a Fall

The landscape of users now pretty well falls into those who just use the device as intended (Normobs), those who will install and use apps in a managed environment (iPhoners) and those users who take on a whole pile of effort and responsibility to play with their devices (Nokians).  One could argue that G1 users are most alike to the Nokians in this model.

What Nokia’s OVI application store will do for users is afford Normobs the ability to discover, purchase and install applications in a more iPhoner way.

There is a problem I foresee.  S60 applications are far more complicated in nature that iPhone apps.  It’s C++ to HTML.  S60 apps are allowed and encouraged to utilise phone resources whilst in the background whereas iPhone apps are still awaiting the long promised polling from Apple.

I’m not arguing over which approach is the right one here.

But when OVI allows for applications to be easily installed onto S60 devices where those applications can compete for resource the stability of the device and in turn the user experience are in for a bashing.

How so?

Well if you install AppA & AppB on the iPhone, use and switch between them each closes down neatly leaving the path clear for the other.  The theory is the user never has to worry about the phone  not working as a phone or applications stalling core functionality.  The experience is always simple, easy and clean.

Switching between those same to apps on S60 no such rules are enforced and should there be a conflict, a memory leak or crash the user sees a fail. 

The issue for Nokia will be, I suspect, that users will blame OVI for the issue in much the same way Apple copped flak for such clashes.

Can the Fall be averted?

With so many people embedded into the iPod/iPhone mentallity of click and play sadly I suspect Nokia has left it far too late in the day to avert a PR disaster without spending truly huge sums of money on re-educating the public that apps bought through OVI just can’t be guaranteed to not create havoc in the same way that Apple can. 

Sure they could undertake an application testing/verification process but that would stiffle development and actually make things more expensive.

I have high hopes for OVI but after recent OVI experiences they are tempered with only moderate expectations.

The MIR Fallout

Okay so a week or so on and everyone seems to have gathered that Ewan has “sold” the entire content of Mobile Industry Review to some anonymous third party and that from the end of March 2009 they are taking the content into the subscription only space.  You did see this news right?

Now that the dust has settled and my mind is free enough of normal and important things to offer up some attention to this I think I can see what’s been bugging me about this whole affair.

It’s not the move to subscriptions or the absurd £12k a year Ewan wants for it, after all isn’t every site looking to find a revenue stream aside from advertising.

It’s not that taking all the content out of the public eye is bucking the opening up trend.

It’s not even the curious decision to isolate the community of industry geeks (and just plain old interested geeks) who have through their collective efforts voiced opinions, written articles and posts, fed news and offered up comments in order to bolster the content of MIR.

What is bugging me (or at least has been until today) is who on earth would have bought the rights?  What content was it they were actually interested in and at what price?

So I got to thinking who might be an interested party for either a takeover or exclusive syndication of the content.  To be honest I could well imagine many industry news sites wanting the video content but that’s about it.  Most of the useful mobile industry sites have their own hacks and are all on the receiving end of the same press releases.  In other words the only major value I can see in the MIR content is that of the video which is after all the most costly thing to produce.

Given the “deal” was therefore most likely done for the video content (sorry James, Jonathan et al for not overly valuing your written efforts) to whom was this of most value, and again at what price?

But news from Whatleydude on his blog intimates that he is moving on and this changes the questioning substantially for me.

I was kind of under the impression that like so many others James, Ben & Dan had given their time and efforts freely (or at least without being paid) to help create the MIR shows.  If James is moving on does this mean the others will follow?  Is this the end of the MIR show?

Ewan talks about the new subscription model in “we” and “our” terms but will there even be a team to back him up?  Also on the subject of the team – where do they stand on this move? It’s been ominously quiet.  Did they get a pay day, should they have stood to gain financially from the changes, they were of course the creatives behind the content?

Maybe we’ll get a final public swansong from James tomorrow or Jonathan on Thursday thanking the community for the attention and announcing their move to the Caymans on the proceeds.

Personally I can understand a move to a subscription model in part but seriously doubt that in its current form and without the support and goodwill of the community (who if they are like me feel a little deflated) I can’t see the “phenomenal reach” that is promised to would be subscribers.

There are a number of other questions running around my head mostly to do with the viability of the subscription strategy and Ewan’s ability to deliver but that can wait for another post methinks.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Mobile Industry Review: The End of an Era (whatleydude.com)
• Blog plans £12k subscription fee (Brandrepublic.com)

An Unspoken Code of Trust Amongst Mobile Workers

Who says there is no goodwill, no decent human beings in the world, that trust is dead?

As I sit here in the ICA Bar I could have highlighted a good dozen or so occasions today where people have demonstrated plenty of decency towards others.

Right now I am sat at the table next to – well who knows.  I don’t.  He’s just a guy sat down sharing a power socket getting on with work/play again who knows, who cares.

The point is he just got up and went outside to receive a phone call leaving his laptop unattended and unlocked.

Earlier on I left mine sitting on the table at #tuttle with little regard for it’s safety (mind you the disk is double encrypted so good luck to would be thieves).

There seems to be an unspoken code of “we’re sharing a space, we’re doing similar activities so look out for me and I’ll look out for you” going on here.

Something I was quite used to in New Zealand but never really expected to find in London.

In fact thinking on it the number of times people on the train just get up to put stuff in bins or pop to the WC leaving a coat or bag in situ astounds me.

Maybe there are more decent people out there than we all give credit to.

SkyFire – A new step forward in mobile browsers?

Let me start off with it is great that SkyFire is launching in the UK, more browser competition is a good thing and no where more so than on the mobile platform.  This isn’t meant to be an in depth review or critique rather a brain dump following a a conversation I had yesterday
with SkyFire and in part a response to RobK’s article over on Mobile Industry Review.

I have concerns about SkyFire.  I raised this on Twitter yesterday briefly so I will try to articulate them here in the hope that it will i) spark more discussion and ii) hopefully set me straight.

Architecture
Up front I am not an architecture expert but even I can see that essentially what SkyFire are doing is providing a proxied web cache server-side so that response times client-side are nice and snappy.  That’s a good thing.  The flip side is that everything you do in the browser is done through SkyFire’s caching servers.

Do your banking on the mobile and it’s cached.  Browse for some interesting PRON and that’ll get cached to.  Now this may not sound like a big problem, afterall ISP’s often cache frequently accessed content to improve response times and reduce upstream bandwidth so read on.

Privacy and Your Information
Remember when Google first launched Chrome and people got all in a tiz over the EULA and how effectively it gave Google a seriously strong hold over well everything one did online?

Google backed down on that one and  I only hope that the provisions in question are not backin the newly revamped v.1 release.

Well SkyFire has some pretty interesting terms in their Privacy statement also.  Aside from collecting a bundle of personal information on signup they also grab, store and dive around in those logs of everything you do.  Whilst the privacy policy clearly states that anything that leaves SkyFire or it’s partners to be used for advertising generation is anonymised I’m not such just how comfortable I am about having every single part of my browsing habit correlated with my personal information anonymised or not.

The other side of the privacy issue here that bothers me right now is that whilst SkyFire have placed caching boxes UK side, there is no mention of where within SkyFire my personal information is stored or U are a  hell of a lot more robust than those in the US – where SkyFire corporate is based.

Don’t think this is a potential problem?  Just go have a dig around the web about some of the provisions in US legislature regarding federal access to your information.

There is a really good reason why in 2007 the French Government banned it’s  employees from using RIM Blackberry devices in official capacity when all email goes via RIM’s US based servers.

User Experience
There are many components to a great user experience (UX).  SkyFire’s browser looks great, the caching technology provides responsive rendering (assuming the UK servers are up) and overall it’s a nice little browser to use so plus one there.

Another aspect to UX of a web browser though is usability.  Not usability of the software itself (that’s fine) but of the web sites being rendered themselves.

Back in the day web designers built web pages to suit different browsers, screen resolutions and so on.  Then IE kind of won out for a while but along came CSS and content separation from layout.  All of a sudden it was possible to fairly easily create fluid, dynamic layouts easily repurposed for different delivery channels.

Today savvy web development accepts that the mobile platform is rapidly gaining acceptance and is in all likelihood going to rule the roost  in the not too distant future.  To that end they take account not only of the reduced screen real estate but also of the subtly differing uses of popular websites by mobile users.  For example viewing Flickr.com and m.flickr.com give slightly different view points on the same content.

Apple gave a nice nod towards this being a sensible approach when they threw the iPhone to the baying masses.  The Safari browser will render sites in their full glory allowing you to scroll around and zoom in and out effortlessly.  BUT applications builts around the iPhone are more list orientated to take account of the form factor, fat fingers instead of precise mouse pointers, and also the need for simpler easily navigable menuesque structures.

So far few have complained of this dual approach being a bad one.

SkyFire are currently claiming one of it’s killer UX features is it’s ability to render full size web sites in their original glory.  No, no, no.  This is not a killer feature.  The demo I was given showed the YouTube homepage squished down to fit a QVGA screen.  Now true enough it looked like the original and sure the video ran really well (good skills there) BUT you couldn’t read the options, comments or pretty well anything without an electron microscope.   Showing a facsimile of a site does not automatically create a great experience.  That’s why YouTube have i) a mobile site and ii) an api allowing third parties to create differing and more suitable experiences based on the form factor being used.

Now I know I am banging on about this a fair bit, but it is a massive bug bear of mine.  You see I currently only have a netbook (all the ‘real’ kit is in storage still).  Much as I love this little thing the screen resolution of 1024×600 can let me down.   Or more to the point web developers that insist on constricting layouts to suit their own design aesthetics leaves me cold when they just don’t work.  Sites that require me to squish the display or scroll the entire desktop just to click a confirm button are an instant and never revisited FAIL.
Why would I want to do this on my mobile as well?

But in SkyFire’s defense I do openly admit and applaud their commitment to bringing full sized sites to the mobile – afterall until web designers get their act together and allow for this form factor shift we need easy to use browsers that can give us some help.

Open vs Closed Source
Does anyone know?  I asked if the core of SkyFire’s browser was proprietory to which I was given a yes, but as to any parts being open sourced a blank stare was the response.  This is not the place to enter into a debate on the pro’s and con’s of open vs closed source (IMHO there is a place and need for both, often within the same product) but I suspect that as the majority of those likely to install SkyFire over a default browser on their phone may have a vague understanding of the issues it seems only sensible for SkyFire’s people to be able to give a coherent answer.

Revenue Model
SkyFire have not yet publically announced their revenue model, although they will admit to already being in receipt of some advertising cash – I believe from Google adwords.  If I’m reading the Privacy policy right the whole product is designed to create a managed channel through which they can fairly accurately create profiles for users and throw advertising at them.

Whilst I personally think this type of advertising model is beyond broken I will admit right now it delivers.  What bothers me though is that for SkyFire to succeed it needs lots of users, signed up, browsing and creating complete profiles.

Without overtly stating that by signing up SkyFire will be collecting and onselling the right to advertise at you it all just seems a little well, underhand.  Afterall who else out there actually reads those T&C’s that have an easily clickable “Agree” button?

I co
uld, and indeed would love to be wrong here.  Given SkyFire’s complete control over the channel they are potentially putting themselves in a very good position BUT IMHO they really really need to be upfront  about what they are actually doing, why and how.

So for now I’m happy to see SkyFire on the scene, as a Beta product it’s well polished and offers up a far better experience than other S60 browsers for sure but as web developers get more savvy and the advertising models that underpin so much of today’s online business get deconstructed, disrupted and destroyed I just hope that SkyFire have a really good plan.

3UK Coverage – Followup

So after my whinge about the dire coverage at home I did a bit more investigation and talking to people.

Today I spoke to Customer Services (somewhere in Mubai I believe) who have a very different view point of my address saying that it is at best a marginal reception area and that had I gone to a shop to buy the phone they I would have been advised of this prior to purchase but that when purchasing via the website no such warning is given!

The thing is, when I went to a 3UK store last week they checked me out and claimed that whole full on HSDPA coverage as well.

So the question I have is what rights to I have here? 3UK sold me a phone and based on it’s published information it should work for me in my location. It doesn’t and because of 3UK’s firmware meddling I can’t even force it to not attempt a 3G signal lock just go for Mr Reliable GSM.

Oh the woes and they get better…

ThreeUK has Coverage for 99.5% of the UK – Just Not Me!

In New Zealand much scorn was poured upon the mobile duopoly of Telecom NZ and Vodafone.  God knows I dislike the later as much, if not more so than the next man, but that is a post for another day.

But for a country of less than 5 million and yet a similar size to the UK (i.e. pretty sparsely populated) generally mobile comms was pretty decent.  I mean, take the little (130,000 people) town we resided in, Tauranga.  At home I was a good 7 miles from the cell tower BUT maintained either a 3G or 3.5G (HSDPA) signal 24×7.

Right now I’m living in the South East of England, Kent to be precise.  We’re about 25 miles from the centre of London, 5 from the M25 – hardly the back of beyond.  I can see a cell tower from the upstairs bedroom window (about 8 miles away) and know full well that there are a few more I can’t see that are closer.

Can I get a reliable signal here.  Nope.  Upstairs with line of sight maybe, just maybe half a full set of bars.  Downstairs – where I want to work – nothing.  Not even a GSM signal capable of sending an SMS let alone holding a voice call or data.

And it’s not as if I hadn’t done some research before choosing a network – I asked loads of people, rang a few customer service desks (although how a guy in Mubai is seriously going to understand localised signal problems in the Garden of England I don’t get).

After looking ThreeUK seemed the best bet with coverage for 99.5% of the UK.   Actually looking at Three’s coverage map we should have full blown 3.5G!

So new (back) to the UK, job hunting and such I have to hand out my contact details daily.  But missing those calls has been a regular occurrence as of course not only does the call not come through but neither does the SMS letting me know or the voicemail message from Three.

Scuppered.

[Caption]

Disruptive Voicemail

ThreeUK has Coverage for 99.5% of the UK – Just Not Me!

In New Zealand much scorn was poured upon the mobile duopoly of Telecom NZ and Vodafone.  God knows I dislike the later as much, if not more so than the next man, but that is a post for another day.

But for a country of less than 5 million and yet a similar size to the UK (i.e. pretty sparsely populated) generally mobile comms was pretty decent.  I mean, take the little (130,000 people) town we resided in, Tauranga.  At home I was a good 7 miles from the cell tower BUT maintained either a 3G or 3.5G (HSDPA) signal 24×7.

Right now I’m living in the South East of England, Kent to be precise.  We’re about 25 miles from the centre of London, 5 from the M25 – hardly the back of beyond.  I can see a cell tower from the upstairs bedroom window (about 8 miles away) and know full well that there are a few more I can’t see that are closer.

Can I get a reliable signal here.  Nope.  Upstairs with line of sight maybe, just maybe half a full set of bars.  Downstairs – where I want to work – nothing.  Not even a GSM signal capable of sending an SMS let alone holding a voice call or data.

And it’s not as if I hadn’t done some research before choosing a network – I asked loads of people, rang a few customer service desks (although how a guy in Mubai is seriously going to understand localised signal problems in the Garden of England I don’t get).

After looking ThreeUK seemed the best bet with coverage for 99.5% of the UK.   Actually looking at Three’s coverage map we should have full blown 3.5G!

So new (back) to the UK, job hunting and such I have to hand out my contact details daily.  But missing those calls has been a regular occurrence as of course not only does the call not come through but neither does the SMS letting me know or the voicemail message from Three.

Scuppered.

[Caption]

Differential pricing for video calling – is this a disability issue?

A few days back a conversation on Jaiku in which a comment was made regarding the use by the deaf as a potential driver for video calling.

My thoughts on this are yet to be fully formed but it raised a couple of immediate questions;

1) Does 2-way video calling potential level the telecoms playing field for those with a hearing impairment in that now that can use the service to lip-read (assuming they can)?

2) Has anyone done any research into this?

3) Does the differential pricing for video calls, whereby the operator’s charge more for a video call than a voice call, represent discrimination against those unable to utilise the voice service?

Rather obviously for the deaf SMS, IM and microblogging services are a level playing field already.

Hmmm. This needs more thinking.

Energizer Energi to Go Mobile Power Solution

This little gizmo snuck onto the scene just before Crimbo over at The Cool Hunter.

Fresh off the production line Energizer seems to have hit upon a potential winner with there new Energi To Go mobile charging units.

These little bad boys take standard AA batteries and given a decent set of 2300mAh bunny bungs you should be able to get a couple of charges of your latest and greatest mobile device.

Amazon have them at $11.99 at Amazon’s US store

or £19.99 at Amazon’s UK store

I WANT A NOKIA ONE! (Just a shame Amazon won’t ship to NZ)