When I got the Nokia N97 for review, I was excited to be able to use the Ovi Store to help me setup my first fresh device since it had launched. I quickly opened it up and started searching through for my favorite apps. Unfortunately, searching was all I did – it seems as though the Ovi Store has an extremely limited number of freeware applications, and few of them are ones that I use. While I know that the Ovi Store is designed to be a profit center for both developers and Nokia, it’s incredibly important that they not neglect the freeware developers, for several reasons.
First, I’m sure you’re wondering which apps I needed. For starters, Best Screensnap is the only app that allows you to take screenshots in S60v5, so I needed that. I also needed Y-Browser, along with its plugins, Mobbler to stream Last.FM tunes, Google Maps Mobile, SportsTracker, and a few themes. None of these are currently listed in the Ovi Store, despite being well known in the Symbian community as quality applications.
Thus, as a new Symbian user, I’m already being forced to sideload applications and find them elsewhere, and being trained that the Ovi Store doesn’t always have the applications I need on my phone. With the prominence of Pandora on other popular platforms, you would think Nokia would want to broadcast Mobbler’s existence from the rooftops as a superior option, and SportsTracker is Nokia’s own application – there’s no excuse for it not being readily available through the Ovi Store.
I’ve said before that it’s not Nokia’s fault that some applications, such as Google’s apps, Opera Mini, etc, aren’t available through the Ovi Store. The developer is responsible for listing their application in the store, and while I still believe that, I’m changing my tone slightly. It’s imperative that Nokia is talking to these developers to get popular, well-known freeware listed in the Ovi Store. Nokia needs to position the Ovi Store as the premier place to download popular applications, regardless of whether they’re freeware or commercial.
Themes are a similar problem on the Ovi Store. For starters, I have trouble simply *finding* any themes on the Ovi Store. If you haven’t discovered them yet, they’re hidden in the Personalizations section, under a category – you’re not likely to see them in the main list. When you do find them, there’s a small list of themes, none of which look particularly impressive. A newcomer would simply assume that Symbian’s theming community is lame – which is obviously the opposite of the truth!
Nokia needs to be working closely with themers such as TehkSeven, Dhanusaud, PiZero, BabiNokia, and all the rest to get their latest and greatest themes listed in the Ovi Store. Some of these themers even offer commercial themes – which I’m sure they would love to list alongside their free themes.
Basically, Nokia needs to be building the Ovi Store out to be *the* destination for anything you may need for your Symbian phone, rather than a pure marketplace. I shouldn’t have to sideload a single application onto my phone, ever. Everything should be available through the Ovi Store. By doing so, Nokia can train users to think of the Ovi Store first, which gets people to open the store on their phones more often, which makes it more likely that they’ll purchase something they weren’t looking for in the first place.
