SMS checkout and billing on Nokia Ovi Store
Nokia announced today that consumers can now purchase content from the Ovi Store using their prepaid credit or cell phone contracts via an integrated SMS service. Customers will be billed for this service as part of their monthly bill from their operator or it will be deducted from their prepaid airtime credit.
“Until now, the only way to purchase from the Ovi Store has been via credit card,” says Yusuf Patel, solutions sales manager at Nokia South Africa. “This has prevented some consumers from purchasing content as they did not have access to a credit card.”
The service is available to MTN, Vodacom and Cell C subscribers.
The SMS service will be billed according to the cost of the application or content being downloaded which ranges from R9-00 to R150-00. Download commences as soon as SMS confirmation has been received. Purchase verification is done in the process by the service provider.
According to Patel the new billing mechanism is not only an advantage for the consumer due to the ease of the process, but it also means that more applications and content will be downloaded creating an even bigger market for developers in South Africa.
“Nokia have clearly been listening to the needs of local developers,” says Ron Bach, product manager, News24 Mobile. “Through the introduction of operator billing more users will now visit the Ovi Store, further increasing the opportunity for local developers to earn revenue by producing and selling relevant, high-quality, useful apps and mobile content.”
Patrick Kuwana, co-founder and CEO of Livemobile, says that Nokia’s move to make apps on the Ovi Store available through operator billing is a major move in the right direction.
“We expect to see exponential growth in the download of our apps because of this and this strategic move by Nokia will certainly spur us on to further development on the Nokia platform as we see Nokia as a partner who is serious about creating revenue channels to market for app providers like us,” says Kuwana.
Nokia Ovi Store credit card-less purchasing << will you be making use of the service?
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