Nokia’s Ovi team should be happy that it has been largely out of the press recently – the last messages coming out of this particular madhouse have not been too impressive. Think wrong sales stats, bloated free download numbers with conversion rates as low as 1:10000, peddling a developer environment whose products you cannot sell (Qt) and other niceties unique to this particular channel.
So far, it has appeared that Nokia was at least aware of the issues in their store, and was actively trying to get conversion rates up so that developers can actually make a somewhat decent living off the store (top-seller apps regularly net less than 500 Euros a month). Unfortunately, it looks like they have now completely lost it.
It has been traditional that developers add non-functioning toolbar items to their low-end products in order to entice customers to upgrade to more expensive versions (which, incidentally, still is impossible on Ovi more than 6 months after launch). This then looks like in the image below:
Unfortunately, Nokia has an issue with images like the one above. Their QA team now fails all applications whose screenshots contain mentions of features not found in the actual application. In Nokiaspeak, this reads as follows:
…
The screenshots in your item’s metadata implies that your application contains a GPS feature which in actuality is only available in LocoNote Plus. The QA team does not permit items that promote features that are not available in the applications as it results in misleading information about the content item to the end users. To maintain a pleasant user experience for our Ovi users, we request that you update your screenshots to reflect accurate information about your application.
…
To put this into perspective: the application in question has sold a fair bit of times over various channels, and nobody ever raised a complaint about the GPS button. Instead, I got a few emails from customers who were interested in finding out when the Plus version will appear – which would have netted Nokia a nice bit of upgrading revenue.
Of course, all of this could be the work of a few moronic QA employees who are running crazy as their management is out of the house for the upcoming bank holidays. However, as it stands now, I am badly fed up betatesting Nokia’s Ovi and really have to contemplate other venues to more mature markets.
Come Monday, come wisdom…
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