Ovi: door, wall, or minefield?

Sorry to be picking on Ovi.com again, but it has been a few months and recent developments (such as announcement of Nokia’s N900 tablet phone) beg an update.

I’ve been slowly trying to move into and live in the beautifully remodeled house of Ovi, but there are so many broken appliances that the landlord deserves a complaint.  Ovi Contacts can’t be used by Ovi Mail (???!!!) for one, but then again, the Contact syncing started acting up on me last week so maybe like the Mail service it is still too immature for regular use.  Ovi Mail is so far only sending 3 out of 4 emails for me.  That’s not good enough for me to switch from Hotmail (my current internet email provider).

Then to top things off, I read that Nokia’s music service will not be coming to the United States until 2010.  This increasing delay continues to confound me, although blogger opinions on the subject make sense.  What doesn’t is Nokia’s failure to solve the purported issues (like burdensome Digital Rights Management (DRM), lack of blockbuster phones for the service and carrier demands for higher cuts of profit) that have kept a program like Comes With Music from being a success.  Music is a highly compelling usage for handheld devices so this ongoing issue only serves to fuel the cynicism of pundits claiming that Nokia’s promise of renewed US presence is hollow (see my recent post on the subject).

But I don’t want to just gripe, I want to help improve the situation.  So like a good beta-tester I have been reporting my experience to Ovi support.  One thing I can say so far is the experience has been pleasant in a social sense: contact has been friendly and well-intended.  Unfortunately, help is light on the technical side which is requiring more emails to troubleshoot my problem (Ovi quit syncing contacts on my E71x; still unresolved) than it should in my opinion.

The impending arrival of the N900 and whatever else is introduced at Nokia World 2009 will just exacerbate this.  By now people naturally expect Ovi to have become fully equipped and rolling steady, and Nokia’s proclivity to release increasing numbers of Ovi-enabled devices will just exacerbate those expectations.  The N900 alone is enjoying buzz Nokia has not seen in years, but nothing kills buzz faster than failed promises and ineffective support.

That leaves Nokia with about a month to fix Ovi in my estimation, and I daresay if it is not by done they might as well think about shutting it down.  It’s well past due time to bring on the necessary resources and just get it done.  No more showstopper bugs, no more beta.  And no more excuses either– in today’s economy, there are plenty of us available and ready to make this endeavor work.  Just hire the people.

Nokia, you’ve already lost the difficult-to-reach segment and they’re high on the Ovi Failure bandwagon.  Blog after blog is readying funeral announcements… and gleefully at that.  There may not be many more opportunities to prove them wrong before the promise becomes nonviable and you lose even the devotees and risk-seekers.

I want Ovi to succeed.  I’m ready to settle in and just use it.  So how about it, Nokia?  When do the corporate sleeves get rolled up?  Mine already are.  😉