Today Nokia and T-Mobile USA announced the Nokia Nuron, which is the Nokia 5230, a Symbian 5.0 device with a 3.2-inch resistive touchscreen, 3G connectivity and a full HTML browser. This device will have Ovi Maps and Ovi Store preloaded and will be available in a few weeks for $69.99 on a two year contract.

From a developer's perspective this is great news as Ovi Store on the Nokia Nuron will support both operator and credit-card billing.  So if you want to sell your application or game to US consumers, Nokia Nuron users will be able to purchase content and have the charges appear on their monthly statement.

If you're a developer you can get more technical details about the device and how to develop applications and games on Forum Nokia.


For those of you who are already an Ovi Publisher and have an existing application or game already available in Ovi Store for one of the other five Symbian 5.0 devices (N97, N97 mini, 5800 XpressMusic, 5530 XpressMusic, X6), you can add the 5230 to your device distribution and make sure you have US selected for country distribution. This way Nokia Nuron users will be able to find and download/purchase your content.

For those of you keeping track, Ovi Store continues to grow and these latest stats indicate an on-going upward trend for downloads and other metrics.  Here are the latest stats for Ovi Store as of the 28th of February:

Downloads
We're seeing around 1.5 million downloads a day through Ovi Store, which is around 22 downloads per second, 24/7, with daily highs of 1,300 downloads per minute. Another detail is on average, each registered user has downloaded (12) items from Ovi Store since the launch.
 
Availability
With support for 30 language variations, 90% of Ovi Store visitors are using their local language when available.  Additionally new users and downloads are up in February more than 100% month-on-month from January. The top downloading countries from Ovi Store in alphabetical order are: France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UK & Vietnam.

Devices
More than 100 devices are supported, 60+ of them Symbian, and the most prominent devices were all touch models: N97, N97 mini, 5800 XpressMusic, and 5530 XpressMusic.

Publishers
With publishers from more than 80 countries distributing their content through Ovi Store, it's a great way for Nokia users in all parts of the world to find something they're looking for.  Recently Polarbit and Nimbuzz have both passed 1 million downloads for their games and app.  The Forum Nokia Ovi Publishers Successes blog has other other application success stories from publishers around the world.

Leave any comments if you have questions and I'll answer them.  Make sure you check out our Publishing to Ovi info page for more information about becoming a publisher for Ovi Store.

There have been some questions from developers recently about what types of content are permitted in Ovi Store and I wanted to share our guidelines with you. These are the guidelines that are posted in our web based publishing tool and support page for registered Ovi Publishers:

The following items are examples of prohibited content:

• Paid content that circumvents Nokia's billing platform
• Content containing copyrighted material you are not authorized to use
• Content containing nudity, pornography or sexually explicit material
• Content with graphic or gratuitous violence
• Content containing ethnic propaganda or other offensive material which attacks or demeans a group or an individual
• Content disparaging governments or politicians
• Content showing minors in an exploitative or abusive light
• Content showing cruelty to animals
• Content showing distressing content
• Content that encourages illegal, dangerous or harmful activities
• Content that contains viruses or harmful code
• Content that links to websites that contain illegal or inappropriate material
• Content promoting drugs or drug paraphernalia
• Content promoting tobacco or tobacco-related products
• Content promoting prostitution
• Content and related policies that disrespects a user's right of privacy

In addition, please keep the following privacy guidelines in mind if your content accesses an end-user's location information:

• Provide users with clear and understandable notice about how their location information will be collected, used, disclosed and protected
• Provide users with tools that enable them to determine and control whether, when, and with whom their information is shared
• Provide, as appropriate, parental controls and child protection tools for users under 18 years of age and their parents or guardians
• Adhere to industry standards regarding the transmission, storage, and access to sensitive personal information like location information

Also please be aware, for content published for use on the AT&T network and devices, here are some tips that can ensure your application meets their requirements:

• Applications should use less than 10Mb per user/per month
• The provider should manage socket connections effectively, which means the maximum time should be 30 minutes
• Additionally, the provider should use ports appropriately or register non-standard use of ports with IANA
• Provider should leave a reasonable length of time before re-trying a request to allow for network latency
• Applications should send no more than 20 messages an hour

Leave any comments if you still have questions.

This weekend both Ovi Store and the Ovi Publishing tool will be down for several hours.

If you're a consumer, Ovi Store will be unavailable Saturday, August 15 from 2pm EST until 6pm EST. This applies to Ovi Store access via mobile device and/or PC. We thank you for your patience as we continue to make the best content available to consumers globally.

If you're a developer, the Ovi Publish team is continually looking to improve the Ovi publishing tool for Ovi Store and as part of this process the team will be undergoing a routine maintenance break. From 2pm EST this Saturday, August 15 through 2pm EST Sunday, August 16, the publishing tool will be unavailable and Ovi publishers won’t be able to log-in. If you’re planning on using the Ovi publishing tool this weekend please plan accordingly. If you have any questions about this service break please contact Publisher Support.

With the launch of Ovi Store happening by the end of this month, I thought it would be good to share with the community examples of the types of reporting Ovi Publishers will get once Ovi Store goes live.

What you see here is a mock-up report showing some of the types of information that will be visible to an Ovi Publisher.  Note: the application name and data is all dummy information and is just used for visual purposes.



Some examples of the types of reporting that will be available to Ovi Publishers includes:
- daily metrics for each content item: downloads by device, country
- daily metrics for the publisher: downloads by device, country, estimated revenue
- total estimated revenue for publisher
- historical monthly reports

If you're an Ovi Publisher then when you log-in to your account you'll notice if you click on the "reports" tab you should see some basic information.  For those of you who aren't yet Ovi Publishers, you can register here.

Any questions, leave a comment and I'll answer.

A few weeks ago at the Nokia Developer Summit I talked about the opportunity for developers with Ovi Store and the benefits with publishing to Ovi. You can listen to the podcast here, or if you prefer you can download the MP3 and listen on your favorite device.

There are also two other podcasts available if you're interested:

"Cross-Platform Development" with Mika Rytkonen
- listen
- download MP3

"Future of Social Location" with Michael Halbherr
- listen
- download MP3