Revenue share model

[MWillits]

As we all know, the revenue share model on Ovi is a joke. Joke on us, developers.

Instead of letting users register a credit card once and pay with it always like everywhere else (other app stores, ebay, amazon, every normal place in the world), Ovi prefers operator billing. This seems to be down to typical Ovi arithmetic: operator billing is there to increase the target audience. This results in 0.1% increase in sales from marginal markets but adds 50% charge in all markets for operator billing. Net result -49.9%. Great business sense!

If only operators contributed anything of value! Their only contribution is billing which, being automated, can't possibly exceed 1c per transaction. Credit card companies also charge, but instead of 50% they'll charge 2-3% for the same service.

But the obscene operator charges are only half the story. To add insult to injury, money collected by operators is delayed by up to 6 months, and, in all likelyhood, some of it we'll never see.

Ovi doesn't help here either - there is no way to see the amount of outstanding balance to be paid by operators. If anything situation if further obfuscated with "breakout reports" spreadsheets - we get don't breakdown of what's charged to end users and when. The reports only include list of items that are being paid to developer.

To give you an illustration, at the end of a month when end users have paid 4000 euro for my apps, my account is credited 340 euro (including operator billing from previous months). There is not a word on how much is outstanding from operators and when it will be settled.

I suppose people at Ovi think this is ok. Normal. Business as usual.

Well, it's not. Developers are running in droves and this one is very close too.