Opinions and Questions on Costs

[ptgoce]

I am not aware of such a page but the above posts should have all the clues you need. The cost varies mainly on the technology used.

I am not aware of such a page but the above posts should have all the clues you need. The cost varies mainly on the technology used.

Qt for S60 is currently not suitable for production but from a licensing perspective you do not have limitation on creating commercial apps. I'm not a lawyer though so you might need to consult one (which will increase you overal development cost).

So much for KISS

[svdwal]

So much for KISS

I'm nut sure how the original poster came to a cost of USD 500 for a developer certificate, but I paid USD 200 last february.

From a business point of view, the only monetary problem I have with Ovi are the operator billing costs, as these have the effect of seriously impacting the revenue, in effect making the S60 market size appear to be one third of it's real value. Everything else (computer costs, certificates, memberships, the lot) are paid for very quickly if your apps are succesfull.

Having apps on App Store and Ovi, I didn't find Ovi much more or much less of a problem than App Store. Both have too many quirks, but that's an extra hour or so.

[ori_regev]

I think the biggest cost of developing for Ovi is the cost of buying devices.

The plethora of Nokia devices fragment the target market, but the market is only attractive if you can target a large part of it.

Nokia can't change this characteristic, but it can substantially reduce the cost of developing for Ovi by adding more devices to their Remote Device Access service. They should also add Series 40 phones to the service.

Better yet, they can buy a service like DeviceAnywhere and provide free (or much cheaper) access to it.

I bought a single iPhone and I can already test my apps for a huge market. I can't do that with Ovi!

Even if you only buy a single device per device-family, it sums up to a huge amount
I don't know in advance how well my app will sell, so how can I decide to buy multiple devices? But if I don't buy multiple devices the target market becomes too small! Catch 22

Ori

[ptgoce]

Everything else (computer costs, certificates, memberships, the lot) are paid for very quickly if your apps are succesfull.

That's the thing, how do you know that your apps are going to be successful? Most of us are developers , not business analyst or something similar.
Before iPhone I developed app for Pocket PC and in 3 years I sold only 36, same app on the app store sold way more than that in the first day!
One of the reasons for low sales in Pocket PC market is that the apps are hacked withing 24 hours, which brings the question: Is Nokia (ovi store) doing anything to protect the apps from been pirated? Because Apple does (or did?) very good job in that area.

Having apps on App Store and Ovi, I didn't find Ovi much more or much less of a problem than App Store. Both have too many quirks, but that's an extra hour or so.

I find ovi store more "birocratic", but than what do you expect form Europeans - no offense anyone, I'm European by origin...

[bloodredsky]

I think the biggest cost of developing for Ovi is the cost of buying devices.

Nokia can't change this characteristic, but it can substantially reduce the cost of developing for Ovi by adding more devices to their Remote Device Access service. They should also add Series 40 phones to the service.

Getting most of the Ovi Store supported S60 devices to RDA is on our todo-list (see currently available models from here: http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/RDA_device_list). But S40 devices are a bit different story, it would be great to add them to the service as well, but the system does not support them (due to technical limitations).

[ori_regev]

DeviceAnywhere offers remote access to S40 devices, but their service is very expensive. Too expensive to be useful.
Perhaps Nokia can subsidise the access to their service.

[RobyOne]

why Nokia Ovi store don't explain the reason why poeople pirate / copy the content directly from Ovi store ? Can you be so kind what will be the action to cover and protect content to be stolen from Ovi store ?

Thanks Roberto

[erichuang2008]

They can NOT simply protect the contents in phones. S60/
Symbian phones havebeen hacked. keywords "Symbian hacked".
Using such hacked phone, hackers can get what they want in Nokia phones. /eric

why Nokia Ovi store don't explain the reason why poeople pirate / copy the content directly from Ovi store ? Can you be so kind what will be the action to cover and protect content to be stolen from Ovi store ?

Thanks Roberto

[RobyOne]

this is partially true , even if the capabilities of the Nokia phones has been hacked is not easy like ABC and even Iphone was jailbreaked but App store still selling a lot why ? because een f the applciation cabn be hacked they are not given without signing (I means secure signed with a specific certificate) that normally was given by Nokia that give the full SIS file clean without any sort of DRM that's the problem.