Allowed to access paid services?

[derconny]

Hi,

I'm writing an application that downloads and displays content from our service. Some of this content is free some costs money. Are we allowed to publish such an application via Ovi Store?

I'm asking because the 'Ovi Store Guidelines' states: "Only Nokia billing is accepted. If the content contains any other external billing solution it will be rejected."

To me this sounds like we can't use the Ovi Store, right? As far as I know, it is also not possible to use the Ovi billing system for purchases like this. So, are there alternatives? Any chance to get this into the Ovi Store?

Thanks!
Cornelius

[symbianyucca]

I'm not official Ovi support person, but AFAIK you can not have links to other sites that allow distributing of any content free or paid. instead all content should be distributed through Ovi store only. the site you are linking to should only contain more information and/or links to additional content that is in the Ovi store.

[derconny]

Thanks for your answer. If it's like you say then there are many applications excluded. In our case the content (audio) is constantly changing, so we can't put the content into the Ovi Store. What are others doing? For example music streaming clients with paid content?

[symbianyucca]

I do not know what the other would do, also I can not give any official answers for Ovi Store, so I would suggest you to send them an email with detailed questions, and waiting them to give you official answer for your specific case.

[derconny]

Thanks! I've mailed them, lets see what happens.

[mrtj]

May I ask what has happened? :-)

[derconny]

Sure, sorry I totally forgot that...

Basically they repeated that they don't want any money flowing between customer and publisher without going through Ovi. They said they might make an exception for subscription based apps. Something (I assume) like having a website with payed content plus an app that accesses this content by using a log-in. E.g. Financial Times.

Generally they've been very vague and pointed out several times that they are afraid (my term) about apps that compete with the Ovi Music Store or other Ovi services.

To summarize it: I translated their answer to "no". Then again, they might accept your app, but you won't know before trying to publish it.

[tamhanna]

There is a new In App Purchasing service which was announced at Nokia World 2010:
http://tamss60.tamoggemon.com/2010/0...ads-purchases/

This could prolly help you out!

[derconny]

Thanks, I've seen that, but I'm unsure it will help us. As I understand it, with In-App-Purchase, you still have to put every single piece of content through the approval process. We have many many small pieces of data provided by our customers that we would like to sell very cheap (but often). So waiting for 2 weeks until a piece of content is approved is, at least, sub optimal. Or due to the large number not possible.

Anyways, I'll keep my eyes open . We still could publish our app through our own website. Also it could be that, once announced, the Ovi In-App-Purchase will have a suitable API for us. We'll see.