not a bad business plan
having the billing go though the provider
they dont have to chase bills and payments and the providers will push their store all the much more to their customers.
Nokia's everything store, Ovi, is open for business and sending applications over the air to S60 handsets, with the cost added to the mobile bill or deducted from a pre-paid balance. The list of supported handsets is increasing every few minutes, with users reporting that the Ovi client has already appeared in the Download! …
Ovi has been bubbling along in an almost working state for some time. Only the vast investment in it has driven any need to actually go live (officially, my account was set up last august!!).
Its flakey and it not integrated with itself, let alone anything else.
Nokia had a great name and i have no doubt still has great engineers but sadly they lost their way a long time ago... too much indecision, n-gage or not to n-gage... no wait, we'll miss the market opportunity and then sit on our hands for a while so someone else can beat us to it then we'll make a half arsed attempt....
Yep that sounds like Ovi aswell... (wait for Apple to do it right, then offer a half arsed alternative).
Now i think about it, comes with headaches was there too... big corps = slow to do ANYTHING
Was pleased to find my N80 on the list of supported phones... but likewise no applications!
Also there appears to be no native app for the phone. The link on Download! just redirects to the really awful mobi site. Not only poorly designed but slow to use as well.
Ovi Store is critical to the release of the N97 and it's looking like a disaster at this stage.