June 2nd, 2009 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Platforms: J2me | 5 Comments »
Following massive complaints, Nokia has decided that Java Verified is no longer obligated for mobile games published on Nokia’s Ovi store (which launched last week).
The rumor about this landed in our mailboxes yesterday night, but some investigation of Adrian Cummings led us to the official S60 blogs where the rumor is confirmed.
Java verification was a hot issue for developers, as the costs of the process would rule out small developers from participating in the Ovi Store. One of Apple’s strong points is the accessibility of the App Store to small developers.
Although this is great news it would ‘appear’ that all developers submitting Java apps should still note… ‘Developers are however required to sign their content using ‘content signing’ (Verisign or Thawte).’
Please somebody correct me if I am wrong – I want to be corrected on this point very much! 🙂
To confirm, that’s US$499 per year btw for Java Verisign Certification to get going on Ovi (assuming one gets through to the deck with product).
Personally I’m still on the fence with this at the time of writing.
From what I understand it indeed requires a verisign or thawte.. so that’s atleast $300 for a year.
With all the problems Ovi store has (I can’t even login right now) I think this falls more in the n-gage category of Nokia’s history: fail!
Is Nokia blind? are they not seeing how Apple and Google are doing it in a succesfull way?
I crossed the line today and entered the Nokia Ovi gate as a publisher, I’ll let you know how I get on later with some of my content which I’ll use as a test run to see if there is indeed revenue on it.
Wish me luck as I’m going to have to spend some of my hard earned Apple iPhone cash to do just this! 😛
Hi,
It’s true that you do need Verisign or Thawte digital ID’s. The reason being that if you don’t sign your apps in this way, there will be installation warnings on Nokia devices – advising consumers that they are about to install an un-trusted application.