A little while back I suggested that I would try and be forthcoming with our sales numbers through Ovi so that the Flash development community could see what was happening behind the scenes with us on this new sales channel. This certainly wasn’t to say that I thought Moket’s content would be the biggest selling through the store (far from it) but I thought it would be helpful since we have been in the Ovi Store from the start.

As some of you will know, Ovi’s reporting screens were removed for quote some time while they were “fixed”, and have just become available again over the weekend. Here’s what I can show you now in terms of how things have been progressing for us:

Now I know these numbers aren’t changing the world (Mills, that’s for you), but you can clearly see a big gap between the top 2 selling items and the rest. Why? Is it because they’re better games? No. Do they have better position on the deck? In a way, yes. You see, we have Cipher and GRORBS available for Nokia’s touch-screen devices (S60 5th Ed) as well as S60 3rd Ed key-based devices, and I’ve made it clear before that there’s a strong skew towards the touch screen devices (or at least there has been) on the Ovi store because the default device that was used to filter the visible content was the 5800 XpressMusic . Currently if I go to the Ovi Store, the default device is a Nokia E71, but don’t get me started about why this also isn’t a great option (they’ve taken off the S40 device they had there for some reason which escapes me at the moment).

So I think it’s fair to say that during the first couple of months selling on Ovi, you would have been doing better if your content was available on a 5800 XpressMusic or N97. Other than that, I’m not sure the numbers for us have been all that much to write home about, as they say.

Geographically it’s very interesting, as I think the top selling regions (and correct me if I’m wrong) were amongst some of the early adopters of the 5800 XpressMusic, so there are conceivably more of these touch devices in those markets (however like I said, I may be wrong). I certainly can’t think of too many other reasons as to why we’re doing comparatively well in Russia

Still, it’s early days for Ovi. There’s been a lot happening behind the scenes, responding to issues that the team knows are there, and tweaking things to try and improve the experience. I think there’s a fair way to go however, and certainly a lot of the changes we’re seeing or wanting should have happened prior to flipping the switch on this. But looking forward, I think for Flash developers this still represents an important platform to be on, and one that I’m sure will continue to mature as time goes on.

And remember if you DO have Flash content published on Ovi Store, you can have it listed on OviFlash.com to hopefully increase some awareness (and who knows, maybe sales?!) of your content.