Nokia halts Ovi Share development, sharpens service strategy focus

At last, some sense prevailing at Nokia! I for one only use Ovi for backups... I want decent integration with Facebook, Flickr etc, not another portal and services duplicating the best of breed.

In light of the recent thread on the N97 as 'the best social networking phone' I wonder what the implications are (if any) for the way the N97 evolves.

Aside from those who bought CWM phones, and to try a few songs to see how it works, does anybody here uses the Nokia Music Store on a regular basis? It's kind of expensive (10 euros for Nevermind by Nirvana, compared to 4.89 euros on the german Amazon MP3 store), the tracks have DRM, and to top that off to access the store from a PC you must use Windows with IE. The whole thing spells "Epic Fail" to me, in giant neon letters, but maybe it's because I'm a Linux user.

To integrate well with 3rd parties we need mature 3rd party applications not only simple widgets. It will take too long time to see Flickr application optimized & integrate itself well in the firmware,this if Yahoo! is interested in programming a .sisx application. Other 3rd party sulotions have there own strategy to make S60 appear like a dump a**,Google will focus on there Android for Example and keep S60 suffer there .jar applications.

The rationalisation arguments are no doubt valid but to me this is primarily a cost-cutting exercise, a response to the global economic downturn. Nokia has already posted relatively poor sales from the last quarter. The years of plenty are over and we are into the years of famine. The questions are how long the famine will last, and will Nokia recover hearts and minds after a fairly mediocre performance in the last eighteen months.

Williamoni wrote:The rationalisation arguments are no doubt valid but to me this is primarily a cost-cutting exercise, a response to the global economic downturn. Nokia has already posted relatively poor sales from the last quarter. The years of plenty are over and we are into the years of famine. The questions are how long the famine will last, and will Nokia recover hearts and minds after a fairly mediocre performance in the last eighteen months.

Yes absolutely, should have made that clearer. I don't think the end result would have been different in the long term, but I'm sure the economic climate has accelerated this.

Ammar_Dento wrote:To integrate well with 3rd parties we need mature 3rd party applications not only simple widgets. It will take too long time to see Flickr application optimized & integrate itself well in the firmware,this if Yahoo! is interested in programming a .sisx application. Other 3rd party sulotions have there own strategy to make S60 appear like a dump a**,Google will focus on there Android for Example and keep S60 suffer there .jar applications.

I think Share online does a good job of integrating with Flickr - makes phot uploads easy, but you can also browse your own and others contacts , add comments etc. In fact I'd rate it as one of the best client solutions for Flickr on mobile. The mobile site is good too.

rvirga wrote:Aside from those who bought CWM phones, and to try a few songs to see how it works, does anybody here uses the Nokia Music Store on a regular basis? It's kind of expensive (10 euros for Nevermind by Nirvana, compared to 4.89 euros on the german Amazon MP3 store), the tracks have DRM, and to top that off to access the store from a PC you must use Windows with IE. The whole thing spells "Epic Fail" to me, in giant neon letters, but maybe it's because I'm a Linux user.

Depends on the market you look at I guess. It's more of a case that in general the Nokia Music system is reasonably well put together. Issues around pricing and DRM will change in time. The convenience factor is impressive IMHO.

But yes agree pricing needs improving. CwM still has a lot of potential too (as demonstrated in Singapore), but need sortng out for other markets.

If they're pointing us in the direction of third parties, why aren't there more services on ShareOnline, necessitating yet another layer of service like PixelPipe, as discussed the other day? Where are the ShareOnline configuration files for Picasa, YouTube, and Facebook?

neilhoskins wrote:If they're pointing us in the direction of third parties, why aren't there more services on ShareOnline, necessitating yet another layer of service like PixelPipe, as discussed the other day? Where are the ShareOnline configuration files for Picasa, YouTube, and Facebook?

I think the point of the announcement is that we'll start seeing a lot more of those. Wish they would hurry up as they can easily push new services when you the phone checks for available services (mutter, mutter).

I think the problem with Ovi Share is that they never let it settle down, they kept changing it before people could get used to it or get to know it:

-First they moved it from Twango.com to share.ovi.com (understandable)

-Then they reformatted it according to user feedback (understandable)

-Then they merged the Twango user database with Ovi's user database which broke all the links to existing Ovi Share embedded material, and also messed up people's upload settings (right general idea, badly handled implementation)

-Then they really radically overhauled it again, removing most of the functionality, for example the current version doesn't allow viewing of the original size picture, though you can download the original size so it is on the server (crazy)

-Then, just as Share Online is becoming more accessible to users through its deeper integration with S60v5 on their most popular smartphone in a long time (the 5800), Nokia decide to freeze development before they've had a chance to add back the main features Ovi Share used to have (crazy)

It's a bit like one of those TV programmes where the broadcaster keeps moving it around in the schedules before it has time to develop an audience. Even the best programmes can't cope with being constantly messed around with, they need to have time to settle.

I think Nokia should leave Ovi Share more or less as it is now and give people time to get used to it.

I for one never really bothered with uploading photos from my phone until I got the 5800, as the new interface makes Share Online a lot easier to access than it ever was on S60v3 phones. Ovi Share could do well if they promote it in association with the 5800, N97 etc etc.

I loved the Ovi service for sharing and used it as a place to share photos and videos directly from my phone. I have bunch of photos in my albums.

Now, if the service is stopped, and it was on beta version, what does it mean?

The next announcement in few months will be they will delete all the user's media?

Again, I don't understand what is nokia vision, with its fatty way of dealing with numerous operating systems, like s40, s60v3, s60v3-FP1, s60v3-FP2, s60v5, Maemo, etc. It was ideal to have s60v5 version for 320x240 with no touch and upgrade through firmaware to the latest version of its s60 OS, and for the new produced phones, like new produced e71, n95, n85 etc to use the lattest backward compatible system. An unique point, an unique to be supported OS. Having hundreds of combinations of the OS with different FPs and different operator customization, it is taking a lot of time. They should learn from Apple: they don't produce anymore the iPhone 1, but only the iPhone 3G, with only one OS.

Why Nokia don't let users to upgrade s60 operating system to the latest FP? like users having s60 FP1 to have firmware upgrade to FP2? It is the same OS, s60v3, isn't it? And even more, why not have a firmware to upgrade s60v3 to s60v5 non-touch mode?

My opinion: This is because Symbian s60 is not a mature OS, it is not 100% backward compatible. Before, like 2-3 years ago when there was no iPhone, no Android, were not many native applications on s60, many of the were Java platform. When iPhone surfaced and Android appeared, Symbian OS was not ready for the competition, simply because it does noy have backward compatibility, like application written for s60v2 to work 100% on s60v3. Even applications written for s60v3 are 3 flavours, s60v3, FP1 and FP2. Why is that? Why the same application cannot deal with these FPs calling what is different in APIs? I'm talking about Nokia own applications, on the beta site. If Nokia does not know how to build an application with its own API to support all the s60 FPs, they are clearly for me behind the rest of the software companies and they really don't know how to design things. Why it is so hard for Nokia to ensure its own s60 interface compatibility for applications? They seem to have lots of problems, unfortunately. Now with Share on Ovi stopped, it is clear somebody in the driver seat recognize he has blurred vision...

rvirga wrote:It's kind of expensive (10 euros for Nevermind by Nirvana, compared to 4.89 euros on the german Amazon MP3 store), the tracks have DRM, and to top that off to access the store from a PC you must use Windows with IE. The whole thing spells "Epic Fail" to me, in giant neon letters, but maybe it's because I'm a Linux user.

You're right. Because of the things you mentioned of course it's an absolute colossal epic failure.

Let's do a quick summary of Nokia's undertakings and decisions:

Comes With Music - fail :icon13: (most titles 100% cheaper elsewhere)
Ovi - fail :icon13:
Friend View - fail :icon13:
Nokia Maps - fail :icon13: (google maps way better)
Download! - fail :icon13:
no more communicators - fail :icon13:
no more tablets - fail :icon13:
ngage - fail :icon13: (where are the good games?)

Did I miss anything?

I guess Nokia is dead set on the startegy of creating basic phones with some smartphone functionality. And they'll rave on about how great these cheap toyish phones sell in India or China.

Sad.

Arthur wrote:You're right. Because of the things you mentioned of course it's an absolute colossal epic failure.

Let's do a quick summary of Nokia's undertakings and decisions:

Comes With Music - fail :icon13: (most titles 100% cheaper elsewhere)

Cheaper than free? Methinks you mean Nokia Music Store...

Ovi - fail :icon13:
Friend View - fail :icon13:
Nokia Maps - fail :icon13: (google maps way better)

Except for not offering turns based navigation and therefore being sod all use as a sat-nav... Nokia Maps works perfectly well leading me from place to place.

TomJ wrote:Nokia Maps works perfectly well leading me from place to place.

one example: you have to switch between day and night mode manually, although the program could easily do it automatically based either on the time or the luminosity sensor. Try switching to night mode while you're driving! Or better, don't!!!

Press ctrl - note night mode has toggled o(n|ff) - carry on. Pretty simple on my e90...

I think you missed my point. My point wasn't that switching between day and night mode was hard (although neither my N82 nor my 5800 have a ctrl key, so it is indeed hard), but rather that it was a manual process. A well-designed navigation program should allow the driver to keep the hands on the wheel at all times. So even if it's just a key on your E90, it's still a key too many. With a simple algorithm you can compute, based on your location and time of the year, approximate sunrise and sundown times, and switch mode automatically based on those calculations and the bultin clock. That's what Garmin XT does. Alternatively, all S60 phones have an ambient light sensor that they use to regulate the intensity of the screen's illumination. Nokia could have used that sensor's readings to switch mode automatically. But asking people to mess around with their phones while driving is wrong and dangerous, no matter how many keystrokes it takes.