A wave of deja vu rushed over me as I prepared to download the Nokia Ovi app this week.
As excitement turned to concern and then to frustration before moving to anger, resignation and then a sense of wistfulness, I realised where the feeling came from: it was the same emotional journey I'd go on every time I tried to connect a new printer to my pentium PC ten years ago.
My wife would stand behind me as I opened the Hewlett Packard box, loaded up the CD-ROM software and tried to find the scuzzy port on the back of the computer. "It's not going to work is it?" she'd sigh. "Don't be negative, darling" I'd respond, knowing deep down she was 100 per cent on the money. And it wouldn't work. And it would be a nightmare. And it would take me all night, when I could have been watching Charlie's Garden Army.
So when Nokia confirmed that Ovi was finally ready for download this week, I gulped audibly before commencing operations. Frankly, it was horrible. The web site kept crashing and gave no obvious indication of how to sideload the app to your phone.
I switched to option B – to go to 'download' on my phone menu and click on the Ovi Store icon to get the client OTA straight to my handset. It took a few tries, but finally worked. However, clicking on resultant Ovi icon (now in the 'applications' menu) just refreshed the screen. Every subsequent attempt to load the client has ended in failure.
Now, it's possible that a firmware update would solve the problem. And, when I get the time, I'll do this
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But would regular 'civilians' do the same. Should they have to?
Looking round the web, lots of people had a similar experience to me (Techcrunch christened Ovi a disaster), while others have been more positive (MIR said 'thumbs up'). Overall, though, this was a poor start. Nokia's been building towards this for years – and even if Ovi flourishes in the next few weeks, it was very very bad PR.
Aside from a few developers, I don't know anyone who feels negatively towards Nokia. On a personal level, they're good people, and corporately Nokia has always supported the content industry more energetically than the laissez faire LG/Samsung and self-regarding Apple.
The business needs Nokia to succeed. If it could approach Apple's success with a fraction of the billion handsets it has out there, we'd all benefit. But content service after content service (NES, Club Nokia, Preminet, Dicscoverer, Download, Music Store, Mosh, N-Gage – count em!) never really deliver.
Maybe, just maybe, Ovi will work like a dream on the N97 – embedded on the device and integrated from the ground up. And if it's the same on every subsequent Nokia smartphone thereafter it will take a few weeks for Ovi to surpass App Store, Android Marketplace and the rest in market penetration.
Just as long as the operators don't force Nokia to remove it.
