Erictric

The Nokia Ovi Store has been taking some heat lately, mostly based on its premature debut to the world. Some are even criticizing it simply because they are not accustomed to it, or because it isn’t the Apple App Store. Little do we realize, however, that those who develop for the Ovi Store are struggling as a result of Nokia’s decisions. Erictric had the opportunity to find out what the challenges were of developing for the Ovi Store, through an exclusive piece written by Ed Hodges, Head of Mobile for the U.K. based Touchnote application (an application which allows people to take a photo on their mobile phones, include a message and the recipient’s address and send to Touchnote over WiFi or mobile data connection.  From there, Touchnote will then create a physical greeting card and put it into the post to be delivered in the UK on the next working day).So – what are the obstacles of designing for Nokia’s Ovi Store?

It’s all about handset fragmentation and what you want to do with your application that makes designing difficult. It’s more time consuming, more expensive and tough.

Nokia has spent years honing its handset design strategy to fit its ever more intricate customer segmentation strategies. As a result, there are hundreds of handsets which have huge differences in CPU power, memory (RAM), Radio Chipsets (GSM / CDMA / WiFi / EDGE / 3G etc) and crucially, operating systems. Developing an application to reach the widest possible audience across this fragmentation is difficult and expensive. Unlike Apple which developed a stylish phone where the developer environment enables easy, stable, integration into all its features and backwards compatibility to earlier software versions, Nokia developers have to work with a myriad of options.

For a Nokia developer the expense comes from programming for different handset permutations. For instance, if you write an app in Symbian to enable deep integration with Nokia’s camera your app will only work across approximately 80 handsets. It’s therefore necessary to write, from scratch, a Java based app which may not have such stable camera integration for the rest of Nokia’s handset range. The expense soon stacks up. To date finding a programming language that can be integrated with the wide spectrum of handsets while delivering beautiful graphics is yet to be resolved.

In the case of Touchnote we were able to ‘filter’ the number of handsets and make an intelligent decision on developing for Symbian Series 60 3rd edition, feature pack 1 & 2 handsets (yes, it does get that precise!) which is approximately 36 handsets. This operating system included the largest volume selling handsets in Nokia’s N series range which also have at least a 3.2 megapixel camera.  We chose these handsets as a high resolution camera is needed to create good definition photos which will look great on our Touchnote printed greetings cards. Symbian was also our preferred choice as it meant our app could be deeply integrated into the handsets operating system, reducing the risk of unstable camera and contact book integration.

The diversity of Nokia’s mobile device family is something that continues to challenge developers, even hurting them financially. The question raised here is: What will Nokia do to help developers out?